Mad World
by JosieVang2
Summary: For over a decade, the wizarding world has suffered under the tyrannical rule of Lord Voldemort. The Order of the Phoenix, the only remaining resistance force in Britain, is verging on the loss of their greatest strength: hope. And so it is just in time, the sudden arrival into their midst of a long-lost young woman born of prophecy. Or is it? Amanda Potter is crazy, after all...
1. Scattered To The Wind

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...

Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies...

And the Dark Lord will mark her as his equal, but she will have power the Dark Lord knows not...

And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives...

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies...

* * *

"You already have the wizarding world, with all that it contains, so why, why Tom, why do you want the muggle world, as well? What is there in it that is of any use to you?" Albus Dumbledore pleaded of his archenemy, his wand raised and at the ready.

"Nothing." Voldemort, Dark Lord and ruler of Wizarding Britain replied almost conversationally, giving an evil grin. "It is just...why should I rule only one world when I can have TWO?"

Dumbledore, seized by a sudden rage, threw a curse Voldemort's way in the blink of an eye, which the latter aggressively redirected into the wall, blowing a hole in number twelve, Grimmauld Place's sitting room - and opening up more space for their duel to take place in.

"Why, Albus, my old friend, I'm shocked, truly." Voldemort hissed, indeed shocked, his eyes wide, and not a hint of a sneer in his voice. "You, attempting to curse me? To KILL me?"

"You may have taken this world, but I will NOT allow you to have theirs!" Dumbledore thundered, slashing his wand viciously through the air, and sending out a whip of purple flames to strike at Voldemort.

Voldemort threw up a shield, but the flames had a force behind them that was unlike any other, and the Dark Lord, shield and all, was sent flying backwards to slam into the sitting room wall.

As he rose to his feet, there was a great deal of fear evident in his face for the first time since their duel had begun. Now...now Voldemort seemed to have realized just how far he had pushed Albus Dumbledore - and he dearly regretted it.

Though, whether or not Voldemort would LIVE to keep regretting it was another question entirely.

Just as the Dark Lord moved forward to retaliate against Dumbledore, several wizards and witches engaged in a fierce duel - members of the Death Eaters and the Order of the Phoenix; Lucius and Draco Malfoy, Cho Chang, Luna Lovegood, Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger, Padma and Parvati Patil, Ron Weasley, and Cedric Diggory (the first five being, as Death Eaters, against the latter five, who were members of the Order) - brought their fight into the sitting room through the very hole Dumbledore's redirected curse had created mere moments ago.

"You may survive to flee this battle, Dumbledore," Voldemort shouted over the sounds of their dueling loyalists. "but you and your Order will have nowhere to run TO! At long last I have found you out; at long last, your precious headquarters belongs to me now!"

Dumbledore realized the very same thing, for he called out suddenly to the members of the Order, his voice magically amplified to carry to all floors, all rooms, and all corners of Grimmauld Place, former headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, "All soldiers, retreat and regroup! Disengage, and retreat immediately!"

With that order given, Albus Dumbledore, for the first time in his entire life, fled the scene of battle, and headed for the hallway that would take him out the front doors of number twelve, and onto the streets of London.

Voldemort did not hesitate to follow Dumbledore, a gleeful smile overtaking his snake-like face.

* * *

Retreat "immediately", Parvati Patil thought, as she sent a blasting curse at Cho Chang's head, didn't leave a lot of wiggle room for her to do what she so badly wanted to do: blow Cho's pretty little Chinese head to pieces for torturing and killing her three-year-old little sister, her mother, and her father last year after having found them in their hiding place in the countryside.

Parvati didn't need to even look at her twin, who had thrown a cutting curse at Cho's neck with the goal of decapitating the woman, to know that Padma felt the same way she did about Dumbledore's order to retreat - in the middle of losing headquarters to a siege by Death Eaters or not.

Unfortunately, Cho seemed to have some objections about the whole "blow her head off and decapitate her at the same time" thing that the Patil twins were angling for, because she blocked both curses with a shield charm, which was fortified by a shield charm cast around her by Luna Lovegood, her insane, pale little lover, who had gained a split second of breathing room against Hermione Granger's relentless assault and superior skill only by way of a creative sneak attack which had involved levitating (ironically) a book, and sending it zooming across the sitting room to slam into the square of Hermione's back.

Parvati unleashed another blasting curse on Cho, each second she spent looking at the woman only increasing her rage. Cho had once been a member of the Order, but she had switched sides last year; doing what she had done to Parvati and Padma's family had been a test of her loyalty to Voldemort and the Death Eaters, and one that she had passed with flying colors.

Though, Cho had not switched sides for any good - or even understandable - reason. She hadn't done it because she believed in pureblood supremacy, she hadn't done it because of even blackmail or threats to her life or the life of those she loved if she didn't join the Death Eater cause, and nor had she done it because she wanted to be with her insane girlfriend rather than AGAINST her insane girlfriend. That last one especially, Parvati could have understood and even accepted, considering the amount of former friends or even family members who had been fighting each other from on opposite sides in this long and terrible war...

But no. Cho Chang had switched sides solely because, in her own, gloating words half an hour ago when this Death Eater assault on Order headquarters had begun, and she had first found herself facing the Patil twins: "I was smart enough to join the winning team."

THAT reason - changing sides simply because YOUR side was losing - Parvati would NEVER understand and would NEVER accept.

That reason deserved only contempt and disgust.

And something very big and very heavy rammed down its traitorous throat, as Hermione - after blasting Luna clean off her feet and into the nearest wall with a resounding crack that broke through even the sounds of combat - attempted to do by conjuring a metal pole up near the high ceiling and bringing it slicing down for Cho's face, whose head had been forced back by a magical, golden noose Padma had managed to wrap around her neck.

But, as with the Patil twins' simultaneous blasting and cutting curses, it just wasn't to be.

Cho escaped the pole Hermione had intended to shove down her open mouth by looping her arms around Padma's rope and pulling herself forward. Although, despite that the pole did NOT go down her throat, it DID go right through Cho's leg, just below the knee, which pinned her to the sitting room floor like a worm on a fishing hook.

'Now you die.' Parvati thought fiercely, thrusting her wand at the helpless, traitorous, MURDERESS-of-toddlers woman. 'Bombar-!'

When Parvati suddenly found herself going from preparing to kill Cho, to rolling across the floor and slamming into a bookshelf, she did not, at first, have a clue WHAT had happened to her.

There had been no flash of light, surely no spell cast at her.

Then, as Parvati took stock of her surroundings and her own self, she realized she was entangled in a mess of pale limbs and pale hair, and that there was a pair of big, glittering blue eyes not even a foot in front of her face, which were so close that their owner could be mistaken for trying to kiss Parvati Patil.

Which, not a moment later, was EXACTLY what happened.

Parvati responded by biting down, HARD, on Luna Lovegood's probing tongue and shoving the pale freak away from her with both arms (because, to Parvati's horror, she seemed to have lost her wand when Luna had full-body-tackled her).

Scrambling to her feet (and wiping her mouth with a vigor born of disgust), Parvati was met by the sight of the backs of both her twin and Hermione, who were fighting back Cho (who had somehow freed herself from the impaling pole, and was now standing heavily on her good leg) in order, Parvati realized, to give HER time to find and take up her wand again.

Well, Parvati was not going to waste the time they were buying her. She immediately set about looking for her wand, and, very luckily, found it amidst a pile of splintered wood and cushion fluff that had once been a very expensive chair.

At about the same time Parvati picked up her wand, Luna had retrieved hers, and the former was forced to engage the latter in battle so as to prevent Luna from attacking Hermione and Padma's exposed backsides. It was really rather fortunate that, for the moment, Parvati's utter disgust at Luna's stolen kiss was outweighing her all-consuming desire to have Cho's head on a silver platter, because otherwise Parvati WOULD, in all likelihood, have just ignored Luna in favor of renewing her murderous assault on Cho - a decision which would have certainly sealed the fates of either Padma or Hermione, and possibly even the both of them.

Something worthy of note was that, throughout all of this, throughout everything that had been going on between Parvati, Padma, Hermione, Luna, and Cho, and even Ron and Ginny Weasley (who had gone off into the kitchen in their own, very personal one on one duel that no sane person from EITHER side of the larger battle for Grimmauld Place was going to try and interrupt), Cedric Diggory had been almost effortlessly dueling both Lucius and Draco Malfoy at the same time in his own corner of the sitting room.

* * *

Packed together almost shoulder-to-shoulder in the second floor hallway, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew were facing off against Bellatrix Lestrange, Narcissa Malfoy, and - if only to keep up pretenses - Severus Snape.

"Well, well, well, isn't this one big family reunion." Snape sneered, raising his wand and casting Sectumsempra at Sirius Black - a fraction of a second slower than he would have had he actually been intending to kill Sirius, which allowed for Sirius to block and absorb the curse into a hastily erected shield. "The infamous Marauders all in one place. Well, not ALL of them, anyway..."

Sirius twisted his face into a very convincing snarl of rage as he retorted, both with words, and a gushing of cursed acid, "James will be rolling in his grave once I've wiped that smirk off your greasy face, Snivellus!"

Snape almost lazily shielded himself from the acid that had been directed at him with the force and quantity of a fire-hose. Bellatrix and Narcissa, however, were not so lucky or so skilled as to have protected themselves on the same level as Snape (mainly owing to the fact that Lupin and Peter had sent simultaneous blasting curses at them a heartbeat after Sirius had started spewing his acid), and the hall was quickly filled with the screams and flailing of the two melting women.

When the women attempted to bid a very panicked and agony-filled retreat down the stairs behind them, the Marauders quickly seized the opportunity to hit them in the back of the neck with cutting curses, ending their lives swiftly and painlessly.

Snape, true to form (and his double agent role), did not stick around to make conversation. He shot three, rapid-fire curses at the Marauders, whirled around, and all but glided down the stairs, his long black robes billowing out behind him.

"Would it kill him to say thank you?" Sirius said to no one in particular, flourishing his wand and staring after Snape.

"You know it would." Lupin said seriously.

"Thank you? For what?" Peter frowned, his voice high and anxious.

"For WHAT?" Sirius turned to Peter with an expression of utmost incredulity. "How about for just knocking off Bellatrix and Narcissa after decades of their being pains in all our collective asses? This moment was a long time coming, and it deserves the proper recognition and-"

"Later." Lupin interrupted. "Did you forget there's a battle going on here?"

"Oh, fine. Battle now, celebration later." Sirius grumbled.

"I just hope this battle ends soon." said Peter shrilly. "I've had about enough of-"

Suddenly, the magically augmented, booming voice of Albus Dumbledore met their ears, calling for all Order forces to escape and regroup, and also cutting Peter's complaint short.

"Oh thank merlin!" Peter cried, relief spreading throughout his sweaty, pale, mouse-like face. "Let's get out of here while we still can!"

"Coward." Sirius snorted, though he did not hesitate to obey Dumbledore's order, and headed for the stairs, with Lupin at his side, and Peter several steps ahead of both Sirius and Lupin.

* * *

Ron Weasley, youngest son of Arthur and Molly Weasley, was fighting a battle he knew he was NOT going to win - at least, not without some help. Which didn't seem likely, given that Dumbledore had just issued an order to abandon Grimmauld Place, HEADQUARTERS, for dead.

"Run along now, brother." Ginny Weasley smirked on hearing Dumbledore's words. "While you still can, that is." she added, flicking her wand and disintegrating the whole dining room table, allowing herself even more room to maneuver - and more to step her viciousness up to eleven.

Ron barely blocked her triple flurry of cutting curses, DIDN'T block the literal swarm of conjured, flaming swords she sent at him from all directions, and yet somehow he came out of that one with all his limbs intact, and with only a few dozen slashes and burns after throwing himself wildly forward in his panic.

Of course, on seeing his sister's face, that panic turned very quickly into rage. "I never asked you-" Ron started, SNARLED, as he transfigured an old grandfather clock into a ravenous wolf, which immediately lunged at Ginny from behind.

Ginny, with so much speed and liquid grace it terrified Ron more than anything else he had seen from her in their many duels over the years, dropped low to the floor in a perfect split, decapitated the wolf as it sailed over her, and then came back up again without even using her hands and shot at Ron the most dangerous curse of all: the Killing Curse.

Ron, in his shock and heightened sense of fear, barely avoided the green streak of light, which sailed right between his free arm and ribs and struck a window behind him, causing it to shatter brilliantly.

"Asked me what, Ronnikins?" Ginny said sweetly, an ugly - and knowing - grin coming to her lips.

"Why?" Ron gritted, as he deflected another of Ginny's lesser curses into the ceiling. "All these years - I never asked why. Well, I'm asking now."

"You never asked because you were scared." Ginny laughed, flourishing her wand and easily blocking one of Ron's Stunners (which brought about a look of genuine surprise on her face for a heartbeat's time). "I could give you the most terrifying, sickening answer you could ever hope to hear." she went on, flashing another of her trademark grins.

"How about just giving me the fucking truth?" Ron snarled, taking a bolt of red lightning on his shield (which, like Ginny's liquid move of a few moments ago, was something new - and terrifying because of it). "Was it Percy? Did you think, I dunno, that he needed SOMEONE, ANYONE on his side, when he was all alone in supporting the Ministry?"

Another look of real surprise passed over Ginny's face. "Percy? You think this was about him?!" High-pitched laughter spilled from her lips. "Not in a million years! He was as idiotic and foolish as the REST of you are, and he outlived his usefulness - hence his execution. I did it myself, you know." she threw out, smiling almost coyly.

"So we bloody suspected." Ron growled, but his face had gone white, and his heart had dropped into his stomach. Because suspecting it all these years, and having it CONFIRMED, now, finally...were two very different things.

Ginny smiled again, and there was nothing at all coy about it this time."Glad I could help. Why don't you lay down and let me help you die now?"

"What if I say no?" Ron retorted, twitching his wand and sending a blast of flames at his little sister.

"What if I say you have no fucking choice?" Ginny shouted over the rush of flames, indicating to Ron that she was, regrettably, alive and shielding herself in a cocoon of magical energy.

"TELL ME WHY, GODDAMNIT!" Ron screamed at her suddenly. Then the last thing he ever expected to happen - happened.

Grimmauld Place's ceiling began to collapse - Ron realized then that the entire building was literally falling apart around them, very much ablaze - and then from out of the stream of flames Ron had issued forth came Ginny.

Ginny, literally flying forward out of the flames at him with a look of pure rage on her pretty face, her left shoulder speared through with a large piece of debris, to lay a hand on Ron's throat and take him back across the dining room and slam him against the wall with a shocking force.

"Because I want you all DEAD!" she shrieked in his face, looking- no, she WAS deranged, Ron realized.

And that one word sunk into Ron's mind: Dead.

Percy was dead, and Ginny had killed him.

And now she wanted HIM, Ron, dead too.

And he WAS dead, he realized, as he noticed Ginny's wand sunk up to the hilt in his gut, blood pouring out over her hand.

"Two down, six to go!" Ginny hissed, her voice equal parts malicious and ecstatic.

And then Grimmauld Place fell apart entirely.

* * *

Cedric Diggory, all around prettyboy, potential male model, Tri-Wizard Champion, former, one time boyfriend of Cho Chang, and one of the most skilled, powerful, and wholly Light members of the Order of the Phoenix, was determined to prove he was worthy of the rumors that had been floating about the Order lately: that Albus Dumbledore had been considering him, Cedric, to become his replacement as the new leader of the Order, in the event that Dumbledore simply stepped down or suffered an unlikely death.

But that determination to prove himself was not why Cedric fought now, nor why he had EVER fought - if he proved himself worthy as a matter of course, in doing what he always did, then so be it, he would take up the mantle if need be, but he wasn't going to actively start showing off or anything like that to garner approval or what have you; he wasn't a politician or something.

No, Cedric fought simply because it was RIGHT. Right to protect the innocent, right to try and take back the wizarding world from the Death Eaters, and right to do everything he could to stop the Death Eaters from making headway in their new goal of taking over MUGGLE Britain as well.

It was also right to do what he did next.

"Ugh!" The noise that came from the girl's mouth was part surprised, part pained, as she stumbled back into the pitch-black alley outside the now-collapsed Grimmauld Place, dropping her wand entirely in favor of draping her arm across the gash Cedric's spell had opened up across her belly, her eyes wide with pure terror and fear - of Cedric, and of her death, if he didn't do something about it.

"Wait- don't!" she cried, sobbed, falling back against a dumpster as Cedric drew nearer to her. "Don't kill me, please! I didn't m-mean to ...to hurt you, or...or any of them, I swear! It's my m-mum, she's...she's...they said..."

"I know." Cedric assured kindly, kneeling in front of the girl and directing his wand at her injury, and concentrating on repairing it. She WAS just a girl, he could see now, up close. She couldn't be more than fourteen, and, having watched her duel before taking over fighting her himself, he really rather doubted her claim of having hurt ANYONE during the siege. At the least, she looked to have TAKEN a heck of a lot more than she had GIVEN - Cedric's mortal wound included. "I know what they do, I know how they trick people." he continued quietly, truthfully. Blackmail, threats and hostages, when the Death Eaters couldn't get people to join them of their own free will.

This dying, thirteen-year-old girl had been forcibly conscripted, forced to partake in the siege as...cannon fodder. Just another number, and PURELY for the purpose of the Death Eaters wanting a heck of a lot more numbers than the Order during their assault.

"I- I'm not...you're not..." the girl choked, eyeing her rapidly resealing wound with weak, wincing, confused eyes, mostly on account of the loss of so much of her blood.

"You're not going to die, no." Cedric spoke gently. "Not here, not today. And not by my wand. What's your name? And, if you can tell me, the name of your mother?"

"Kendra. Kendra Abernathy." The girl swallowed a great deal of her own tears and snot, but didn't seem to notice (or care). "My mum...my mum's name is Tess Abernathy. What are you...going to do with me? I- I don't have anywhere to go, I...they took me from Hogwarts, told me about my mum, and they made me...made me come here, and...and..."

"I'm not going to kill you." Cedric said firmly, fighting back an urge to sigh. "My...friends and I have to disappear for a while, all over the country, before we can start finding each other again. If you like, you can stay with me, travel with me. I'll keep you safe, and when we meet up with my friends again in a safe place-"

"Nowhere is safe." Kendra interrupted, making a noise that was both a laugh and a sob. "We- I- THEY found you here, they took ME from HOGWARTS, with all the wards and- and everything else that's supposed to keep us safe! There is nowhere safe. There hasn't been for a long time, I think."

Cedric stared at her for a long moment, feeling the hard, sinking truth of the girl's words. He gulped, and managed to smile at her, all the same, as he told her, "Well, then, a place that's as safe as anywhere else is right now, which is to say, not at all."

Kendra gave another laugh/sob, and silently nodded her head.

After a few moments of silence, Cedric had healed her wound entirely, and he gave the wide, long scar a tap with a finger. "Done." he pronounced, smiling at Kendra and standing up. "Now, we really need to get out of here before more Death Eaters start showing up. They'll want to scour the surrounding area for survivors and stragglers."

"I'm not a Death Eater!" Kendra exclaimed, hot tears spilling down her face, as she tried to get to her feet, then doubled over terribly, gasping in pain and falling to her knees. Cedric was down with her again instantly, and he didn't hesitate to pick her up in his arms, intent on carrying her out of this place, this battle, that she never should have been in.

"Sorry, sorry, I should've told you - you can't put any strain on your body like that any time soon." Cedric swiftly apologized, an arm going around Kendra's back to secure his hold on her in his arms. "Usually you'd take a few potions and get some rest, but...I'm sorry, I'm not a Healer."

"I'm not a Death Eater." Kendra repeated, her voice a frail, scared little whisper in Cedric's ear, as her arms went around his neck, and her head came to rest on his shoulder. Cedric could feel her burning, salty tears soaking through his shirt.

"I know." he whispered soothingly, carrying her out of the alley, bound for what he could sense had to be the border of the anti-apparition ward the Death Eaters had cast over the area. "I know."

 _You're just a kid._ he added silently.

* * *

"You almost got us all KILLED!" Padma Patil screamed at her twin, punctuating the end of her sentence with a hard slap of Parvati's face.

"Padma-" Hermione started to intervene, stepping forward to grab Padma's - her wife's - wrist when she cocked her hand for another swing at Parvati.

Padma whirled on Hermione, her dark eyes burning. "Let go of me! This- this- this BITCH who I can't BELIEVE I call my twin was so hellbent on-"

"Padma, DEAR, this really isn't the best time or place for this!" Hermione said shrilly, gripping Padma's arm tighter still when the woman started to fight against her. "See that smoke?" Hermione jerked her head to her left, to where thick, black smoke could be seen billowing up into the sky several blocks away. "THAT is why we should keep our voices DOWN and our eyes PEELED!"

"THAT is why Parvati is SUCH a bitch!" Padma said, louder than Hermione, but still a great deal quieter than she had been previously ranting, as she still had the presence of mind to not want to attract Death Eater attention. "Did you SEE HER IN THERE? She was SO preoccupied with making sure Cho lost her life that she put all of OURS in jeopardy! For merlin's sake, I had to pull her BODILY out of that building! And when we ran into the Malfoys outside and set about helping Ced deal with them, Parvati tried to run right back INSIDE - AND THE BUILDING WAS ABOUT TO COLLAPSE! It DID, in fact, and not five seconds after that stunt of hers! If she'd made it back in, she'd have been crushed and DEAD!"

"I know, I was there too." Hermione attempted to placate the angry egyptian woman. "I helped drag Parvati away, too. That's how I got this." she added, holding up her arm to show Padma the bloody gash she had, courtesy of Parvati's fingernails. "Honestly, my sister-in-law has got to have some of the sharpest nails I have ever...I mean, the SECOND sharpest nails I have ever felt." Hermione hastily amended, at Padma's glare. "Anyway, let's get inside somewhere, or apparate somewhere, or something. But whatever we do, we can't stay in the open like this, and eventually we'll need to make our way to the backup headquarters Dumbledore gave us the location to when we went over those contingency plans AGES ago for just this scenario."

Padma finally yanked her arm from Hermione's grasp, but she didn't strike her twin again. Instead, she just nodded to Hermione, and turned to gaze up and down the street with wary eyes.

Parvati remained, as she had been for the past fifteen minutes, totally silent, and seemingly unphased by the behavior of her sister (she hadn't even flinched on being slapped).

In fact, Hermione noticed that Parvati seemed rather out of it, on the whole, and that worried her a great deal more than Parvati's previous state of total, blind bloodlust.

With the peace made between them (or, at least, the silence), it wasn't long before the three women found refuge in a rather nice hotel (which had a pool), because, as Hermione had pointed out, "The last thing the Death Eaters would expect is for any of us to stick around. They'll be moving on from London to the rest of the country in their search, but they'll overlook us hiding in their own backyard." They purchased a room for two, using the accumulated muggle money Hermione always kept stored in her magically expanded pockets, which, of course, meant there were only two beds in the room.

Padma and Hermione took one bed, while Parvati took the other for herself, seeing as the former two women had been married for nearly five years now, and the latter woman would have just ended up killing them due to the still lingering - and still very strong - feelings between them regarding the loss of Grimmauld Place, and Parvati's own actions during the seige in particular, if they had been forced, against all odds, to be within five feet of each other.

Long after midnight, several things contributed to the waking of Hermione from her (remarkably, given the circumstances) relaxed sleep. There was the sound of a sliding window, there was the humid April breeze that followed, and there was the persistent sounds of a woman in a great deal of interpersonal distress.

All of which indicated one thing to Hermione, as she sat upright in bed, and set her eyes on the source of all this. She was not shocked to see what she saw, though she was wary and worried.

Parvati Patil was sitting in the open window, crying, shivering, and looking out - and down - on night-lit London.

This sight would not have alarmed Hermione so if their hotel room had not been on the twenty-second floor.

"Parvati..." Hermione warned, as she carefully (for Padma's sake, and a wish not to wake her) but quickly (for Parvati's sake, and a wish to SAVE her) got out of bed, and started to cross the room for the window.

"Damn." Parvati actually LAUGHED, turning her head to look at Hermione with eyes that already belonged to a corpse. Those eyes stopped Hermione in her tracks. "I was HOPING you would have turned out to be Padma, that would have made this go a lot easier."

"You're not doing this." Hermione said evenly, though her heart was pounding like it had never done before - not even in battle.

"That's why I wanted it to be her." Parvati laughed again. "She probably would have told me to just hurry up and get on with it. Just jump, just stop being such a liability, such a danger, to everyone around me." Hermione took another step forward, and Parvati shook her head. "Don't try it. You won't get close enough to grab me before I can throw myself out of here."

"You're not a danger to anyone." Hermione tried to speak calmly, reasonably. She was the smart one, wasn't she? She needed to put those brains to use, right now, or else lose a sister. But the thing was, right now, her brain seemed to have gone dead. Flat. There was barely any activity firing off across it, hardly any thoughts coming to her mind.

Parvati smiled, shook her head again. "No, she was right, earlier. Padma. I almost got a lot of people killed with how I was acting."

"But it's past, it's gone, it's over with, now." Hermione replied, still trying to maintain her calm, reasonable tones. "You don't seem like a murder-crazed, vengeance-seeking maniac now. You seem quite calm, actually."

"I am the farthest from calm that any woman has ever been, Hermione."

"Look, Parvati, I - we - all understand your feelings towards Cho, especially in light of what she did to your - to mine, too, if you'll recall I married your sister - family."

"Merlin, I wish I hated you right now, sis." Parvati gasped, looking away from Hermione and out the window again. "I wish I hated you as much as Padma hates me now. This is so...so HARD, and you aren't making it any easier with your...your..."

"I'm sorry." said Hermione, not really in the least bit sorry for her current course of action. "Look at me, Parvati. Please. Just look at me." To her surprise (and hope), Parvati did. "Look, I know it was bad, what happened back at headquarters. None of us were prepared, we thought we were all safe, we thought we could be relaxed and happy, and we thought that not even the worst of what was out there could ever possibly get us IN THERE. But it did, and that...that was infuriating, it was...terrifying. It shook us, all of us - myself included. And now," Hermione paused, as her voice rose a pitch, and an unexpected sob tried to escape her lips. "and now we're all apart, we're all...scattered to the wind. Scatter and regroup, was the contingency plan. We couldn't all just go straight for backup HQ, because even the muggles would notice dozens of people apparating at the same time in the exact same place, and with Voldemort trying to take that world he's sure to have imperiused eyes about; police officers and the like. No, we needed this, to do this...and this...it's HARD."

"You'd rather be curled up somewhere nice and warm with Padma and Melinda." Parvati spoke, after a long silence, her voice holding jealousy, bitterness, and a touch of out of place happiness (all of which Hermione very much took note of).

At the mention of Melinda, Hermione and Padma's two-year-old daughter, Hermione's heart simultaneously leaped for joy and sunk with the yearning and pain that she felt at the separation (albeit a necessary one).

"I would rather be, yes." Hermione admitted, with a hard swallow. "There is nothing I would love more in this world, honestly. But- but Melinda is safe where she is, and I can't...WE can't...be seen visiting her, be seen coming and going. No, Padma and I, we can't...we can't - we WON'T - risk Melinda's safety that way. Parvati, if you do this now, here, you'll lose any chance of having what Padma and I have: with each other, and with Melinda." she added, slowly and carefully.

Silence reigned for minutes on end. Neither woman moved, neither woman spoke. Until, finally, Parvati's head dropped to her chest, and a long, shuddering breath was let loose.

"That was a dirty pull, Hermione." she accused, sliding down from the window - and onto solid carpet. "Damned dirty pull. In fact, never use that card against me again."

Hermione tried to grin, but only a weak, relieved smile appeared on her face, which showed off her two, large front teeth (a feature of hers that she had always wanted to change, but that Padma had always NOT wanted her to change, saying that they were perhaps her sexiest of assets; and who was Hermione to argue with THAT kind of comment borne of her wife's mind and lips?). "I'll use it again and again, if it keeps you from doing what you were just on the verge of doing." she replied firmly. "Anyway, I won't have to use it again, will I? You're fine now. I mean, Cho died in that building. You can let go of your rage, your grief, your pain."

"Yeah." Parvati's smile was much stronger than Hermione's, and her eyes no longer looked dead. "I guess I can. I guess...I can hope again. Hope to have what you have with Padma."

"You can do more than hope for it, now." Hermione spoke quietly. "You can go make it happen."

"Not right now." Parvati shook her head. "After the war."

Hermione bit her lip, wondering if she should say what was first and foremost in her mind. In the end, she chose to just say it.

"Parvati, what if there is no 'after' for us? That's why I married Padma, right out of Hogwarts, and why we had Melinda so soon after. That was before the war became this bad, before...well, just look at how we are now, the situation we're in. Looking back on it all, thinking about our present circumstances, I'm glad I married so soon, and I'm glad I had Melinda when I did, because, honestly, I could have easily died back at headquarters along with Cho, and who knows how many others that didn't make it out in time. And I could have died a hundred times before that, in a hundred different battles!"

"So, what you're saying is that there's no time like the present?" Parvati said, after a lengthy silence.

"Exactly." Hermione nodded, pleased that she had had an affect on her sister, and pleased that her sister had used the muggle platitude correctly. She swept past Parvati and shut the window, then took Parvati's arm on the rebound and sat Parvati down on her bed before joining her. "Now, listen. Scattered though we are, I think I might know where to go to find at least one other. If he survived, if he escaped, and if he's smart, that is. And I'd bet on his being all three."

"Who?" Parvati questioned patiently.

"Cedric." Hermione said simply. "I once told him about how I used to go camping in the Forest of Dean with my parents, something I can count on one hand the number of times mentioning to others. I'm sure he'll expect me - us - to go there, so he'll go there and wait for us to find him."

Parvati gave a nod, then cast a glance at her still-slumbering twin. "We can hope."

"More than hope." Hermione smiled. "We leave in the morning."

* * *

"...Ginny..."

A voice in the dark.

"...Ginny...wake up..."

Only pain. Only...

She was floating, rising, and around her was a warmth, a heat...a...

Burning.

"Ginny, please!"

Red.

Ginny Weasley opened her eyes, and found herself, in addition to being in the embrace of Cho Chang, in a private room in St. Mungo's, the hospital that had been, for many years now, completely under Death Eater control, much like the Ministry of Magic, and wizarding Britain on the whole.

"Cho." Ginny snapped, shoving Cho away and sitting up in the hospital bed. She felt no pain, no scarring, no injuries. For all intents and purposes, Grimmauld Place collapsing on top of her had never happened - had only been a bad dream. But if that was the case..."Tell me that he didn't make it out of that place alive, too."

Cho did not ask who Ginny meant. Cho was far from stupid - a trait which Ginny despised more than any other human trait - and Ginny had obsessed over nothing but the total annihilation of her former family members for many, many years now.

"He didn't." Cho answered, a smile coming to her lips. "I asked our salvage teams to save the body for you, when they came across it in the rubble. Or at least, what's left of it." she added softly. "I knew you'd want to see it."

Ginny smiled, too, feeling a rush of relief and satisfaction at Cho's words. More than, really. She felt giddy, dizzy, she felt...like one more link in the chains binding her, keeping her from absolute freedom, had been broken.

"See it, mutilate it, keep it as a souvenir. Thanks, Cho." said Ginny earnestly. It was as she was looking around the room that she realized something - or rather, the ABSENCE of something. "Where's Luna? I would have expected her to be..." She fell silent at the sight of Cho's face being taken over by pure, overwhelming anguish. She had her answer. "I'm sorry."

"It's funny, really." Cho said, in hushed, trembling tones, her eyes rapidly filling up with tears. "This has been our greatest victory, and I've never felt worse."

With a sigh, Ginny took Cho into her arms as best she could in her position, and began running a small, slender hand through Cho's sheet of shiny black hair, which, Ginny noted, actually looked quite pretty when it was being bathed in the rays of the morning sun (this observation being made from a purely objective standpoint, of course).

"You know," Ginny began, speaking quietly into Cho's shoulder. "if she had lived to celebrate this victory with us...well, I think we both know what she'd go out and do."

Cho nodded in Ginny's arms, and spoke in a voice thick with pain, yet also the barest hint of amusement. "Go on one of her expeditions to South America, looking for Nargles or whatever. And she'd drag us with her, and a few dozen other Deathies, just so they could be her pack mules."

"Whatever makes her happy." said Ginny, shrugging, and pulling Cho tighter against herself. "Her last one actually proved the existence of those Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, at any rate."

Cho gave another nod, but didn't say a word for the next few minutes, seeming content with doing some more crying.

Ginny, on the other hand, was not content to let this continue into the next century, so she released Cho, sat back, and said with a fierce grin upon her face, "Hey, this IS a victory, even if we lost some people we'd rather not have, and I think that they'd want us to celebrate. We could even make it about honoring their memories." Not that Ginny believed in that sort of thing, personally. She'd always thought all that stuff was pointless. After all, what were things like honor and glory to the dead? They were...dead, and they had no use for it. Certainly, the living people who honored them weren't doing them any great service seeing as they weren't also alive to experience being honored.

"What do you want to do?" Cho asked, blinking away her tears, her tone more curious now than anything.

"Well, before the orders come down from the top to join the hunt for any surviving Order members - besides the ones that escaped, don't forget that there were still many of them that weren't even AT Grimmauld Place during the time of our assault - we could go on a victory shopping spree." Ginny grinned. While she herself wasn't much of a "girly girl", she knew that Cho most definitely - to an almost sickening extreme, honestly - was.

Honestly, Cho was the only person Ginny had ever met, or even heard of, who spent half an hour prior to a battle putting on makeup and doing her hair. It was like, who in the WORLD did she want to look good for out there? Her enemies as they lay dying, gazing up at her? Or had it always been for Luna, like getting all dressed up for a date? But then, what did THAT say about Cho's sanity, which Ginny had never before questioned?

At the prospect of a celebratory shopping spree, Cho's swimming eyes widened, and filled quickly up with delight, replacing the pain and grief, and the chinese woman broke out of Ginny's embrace and sprang to her feet. "Well, what are we waiting for?!" she demanded of Ginny, her eyes narrowed, and a frown on her face, as if Ginny had been the one...

"Oh, fuck you." Ginny snapped, her nose crinkling with her irritation as she slid off the hospital bed and onto her feet. "Let's just go already, before I change my mind."

'And the trip might not be a TOTAL bore, anyway.' she thought to herself, as she and Cho strode down the halls of St. Mungo's. 'Maybe we can stop by Gringotts, then I'll get to have fun killing some goblins.'

* * *

"I think we've laid low long enough!" Peter Pettigrew's shrill voice rang throughout Knockturn Alley, his volume supporting his opinion.

"That's funny, coming from a man who once spent thirteen years laying low." Lupin replied mildly. "One would think you'd be in your element. After all, it's only been one day."

"No, what's funny is that you're not actually being-" Sirius began, his voice rich with his amusement.

"Don't say it!" Peter squeaked, clapping his hands to his ears.

"I'll have you know that I'm being perfectly-" Lupin glared at Sirius before finishing. "-SERIOUS when I say that Wormtail here shouldn't be so bothered by the state of things."

"That was different, as you well know!" Peter shrilled indignantly. "I had a good home! I had food, I had warmth, and I had a master who-"

"You know, you really come off as the world's creepiest bloke when you start up again with all that 'I had a better life as a rat than as a human' stuff." Sirius interrupted seriously.

"I still don't see why we can't just go straight to the new headquarters." Peter huffed, ignoring Sirius.

"Because - and I'm telling you this for the last time, Wormtail - certain protocols were set in place, and we have to follow them if we want to avoid risking the same thing happening to our new headquarters that just happened to our OLD headquarters." Lupin explained, with a sigh and an impatient air.  
He was normally a very patient person, but he had had to repeat the same thing to Peter twelve times now over the past twenty-four hours, and that (not to mention Peter's voice) would wear thin on ANYONE.

"Fine! But if I see one more-" Peter's words were cut short, because Sirius had suddenly lunged at him and covered his mouth with a hand.

"Sirius, what-" Lupin began, frowning in a cross between disapproval and relief. But then he, too, caught himself and fell silent, as he heard the voices - the FAMILIAR voices - that were becoming louder and louder by the second, as their owners came down the main street of Knockturn Alley.

Sirius, with help from Lupin (the only other person in the trio with a clue), dragged a struggling Peter down a narrow - and incredibly dark - side alley.

"Shut UP, just SHUT UP!" Sirius hissed, practically strangling Peter's fat neck with his arm now. "Or I swear to-" He never finished his sentence. Both, because Lupin had just stunned Peter point blank in the backside, and because the horridly familiar voices were dangerously close to crossing in front of the mouth of the side alley.

"...there's one not too far ahead. Past that bend." Ginny Weasley's voice echoed around the alley.

"You want me to visit a..." Cho Chang's voice trailed off into silence, the embarrassment plain for all to hear. "...one of THOSE places, to visit one of THOSE women? When I said I was feeling very lonely with my girlfriend just having been killed yesterday evening, I didn't mean..."

"Oh, I get it now." Ginny's laughter came loud and clear, now she and Cho were passing right in front of the Marauder's side alley. "You want LOVE, you want ROMANCE, is that it?"

Sirius resisted the urge to snarl like a dog at the sight of all that red hair. Ginny had tried to kill her own parents, once, a few years back, and the whole Order had suspected for even longer that the woman had SUCCEEDED in killing her older brother, Percy. She was highly skilled, incredibly powerful, and also was widely known to be a little bit insane - or a lot.

She had proven to be one of the best, one of the most dangerous, of all the Death Eaters, and, according to Snape's sporadic spy reports, had risen up through their ranks like a bottle cap blown off a shaken up drink.

Now, Sirius might not have always gotten along with Arthur and Molly Weasley, but he knew they were smart and kind people, and that their own daughter would try to murder them (and every other member of her family) for reasons unknown...that was what enraged Sirius most of all about Ginny Weasley.

Turn your back on family if they deserved it (like his), hold in yourself a seething, undying hatred of them if it was justified, try to kill them if you HAD TO, but to do all of the above when your family was some of the most decent people known to humankind...?

That was just...disgusting. Despicable.

Sirius wondered then if he could land a curse on Ginny from this distance, in this very limited window of opportunity...

As if Lupin had read Sirius's mind, the werewolf elbowed him and just shook his head.

Holding back a sigh, Sirius gritted his teeth and, for the moment, let his hate leave his heart.

To attack would only give away their position - and their survival.

And it surely wouldn't make things any easier on the others who had escaped Grimmauld Place yesterday.

"Of course I want romance!" Cho's indignant tones rang out (another one who the very sight of caused Sirius to nearly bite his tongue in half). "Luna and I went back almost a year! There was care, there was the strength of memories and experiences built up over time, and-"

"Do you want what you had with Luna or not?" Ginny interrupted, as if Cho hadn't even been speaking at all, her tone suggesting that she had a very DIFFERENT idea of what Cho had had with Luna than Cho herself did.

"I didn't just have a- a- a FUCK with Luna!" Cho spat vehemently, though sounding, at the same time, on the verge of sobbing.

"...If you say so." Ginny's indifferent tone drifted back to Sirius; the two Death Eaters were past the side alley now, and out sight. "...I'm getting one, though, since we're in the area and all. You can wait outside and do whatever the hell you want to do..."

As the pair of women grew further away, Sirius thought he heard the tail end of Cho Chang's response, and he could have sworn it was something like, "...want to go back to my clothes shopping."

Slowly, with disappointment, regret, and irritation, Sirius rounded on Lupin.

"It was your idea to hide out here." was all Lupin said, in that calm, reasonable tone of his that made Sirius want to bite his head off - literally.

"Yeah, well, let's go hide somewhere else now." Sirius grumbled.

* * *

"Sorry, I- don't know any kitchen spells." Cedric Diggory said, feeling more than a little regret as he gave the answer to Kendra Abernathy, thirteen-year-old Death Eater- ah, forced conscript, and now homeless, hunted girl and, though he wouldn't mention the very real possibility to her (at least, not until he found out for certain), war orphan.

"You can make all this out of nothing, but not food?" Kendra frowned from her cot, waving a hand at the homely little cottage interior of the tent Cedric had conjured for them late the previous night, on arriving in the Forest of Dean.

"We've had food." Cedric replied, shaking his head, though knowing his answer was not exactly to her question.

"We've had BUNNIES!" the girl said, as if she thought there was a universe of difference in there somewhere (which, Cedric reflected, she probably DID think). "And I didn't even have THOSE because HOW COULD YOU DO SOMETHING SO SICK AND EVIL?!"

"Look, you need to eat - especially with that cut I gave you, and all the blood you lost from it." Cedric sighed, retrieving a large piece of cooked rabbit meat from a cupboard. "Just...do what I told you to do in the first place. Just pretend-"

"Pretend it tastes like chicken!" Kendra positively shrieked. "How can I even TRY and do that when I saw you- when I saw you...when I saw you go out there, stun two rabbits, then kill them, take out all their insides, and then hover them inside of the fireplace?!"

"Just pretend THAT never happened." Cedric grinned in spite of himself, offering her the rabbit meat. "Pretend you've just gotten it from a grocery store."

Kendra gave him and the rabbit meat a very dirty look, then shook her head fiercely. "Not that one! I'll do it, but- but not THAT one. Get the other one."

"Should I even ask why?" said Cedric with a laugh, as he stowed his current rabbit back in the cupboard and exchanged it for the other, which was an entire, whole rabbit that neither he nor Kendra had taken any pieces off of as of yet.

"The one you first offered me was the cute, fluffy little white one." the girl responded promptly, as she sat up as best she could in the cot. "This one," she indicated the whole rabbit in Cedric's hands. "was that ugly, fat brown one."

Well, that wasn't how Cedric, personally, would have chosen his meal, but he supposed as long as the kid actually, finally ate it...

She did eat it (the whole thing, in fact), and in under five minutes, and with a ferociousness that, while being both disturbing and amusing to Cedric, was also a great relief, as it betrayed just how hungry she had really been despite all of her protests and complaints (as he had known she had to have been).

"This isn't how I wanted to spend my April." Kendra moaned, l aying back down in her cot after finishing off her rabbit. "Kidnapped, lost my mom, sent to fight a bunch of...a bunch of REBELS."

"From what I saw yesterday, you didn't hurt anyone." Cedric hastened to reassure the girl, once again.

"But I was TRYING!" Kendra burst out, and now, at last, Cedric thought they had come to the heart of her worries. She bit her trembling lower lip, looking at him with sudden fear and panic, then she looked down at her folded hands on her stomach. "I was trying, so, SO HARD, with everything I had, to HURT THEM ALL! Even you, when you jumped in front of me, I...I tried! I tried to hurt you! Every single person I came across, every single person who was just scared and trying to get out of there...and I came in there WITH the people trying to hurt them...and I tried to hurt them, too..."

"So how...how am I NOT a Death Eater? How am I NOT one of them?" she finished, looking at Cedric with tearful, desperate eyes. "Really?"

Cedric was quiet for a long time, seriously pondering Kendra's question, and wondering what answer, if any, he could give to her to allay her fears.

"Kendra, did you want to hurt them?" he said finally, softly. "All those people you say you tried to hurt, did you WANT to hurt them?"

Horror grew in the girl's eyes, and her voice was almost inaudible as she said, "Yes."

Cedric mentally cursed himself, then did some very quick thinking. "Did you want to hurt them to hurt them, or did you want to hurt them to survive?"

The girl blinked at him, confusion overtaking her horror and shame. "Wh-what do you mean?"

"Death Eaters hurt people because they...because they WANT to hurt them, because they WANT to see them suffer, or even die." Cedric continued carefully, now that he had a good idea of what he wanted to say. "That's why they torture their victims. They like seeing people in pain. Last night, during the attack, when you tried to hurt the people that you did, I don't believe you were doing it because you wanted to see them hurt, because you would have LIKED seeing it. No, you tried to hurt them because you wanted to live, because you wanted to survive the night. That's all you did, and that's all any of US did. That's all I did." He paused to watch the glimmerings of understanding begin to show in the girl's eyes. He gave her a small nod, and a smile, before continuing. "Kendra, that's us, that's me, that's you. That's what we're about, that's what makes us different from them. What we do...the only thing we can do...hurting Death Eaters...it's because it's what we need to do to survive, because they'll kill us and torture us without hesitation, and we don't...we don't do it for any other reason, for nothing more, and nothing less. What you did was just...survival. What you did was right, and just, and the only thing you could have done, and I promise you that no one will ever - nor SHOULD they ever - blame you for it. And that includes yourself." he finished, firmly but kindly.

"Thanks." Kendra finally said, looking genuinely relieved, and lighter in her heart and mind.

Cedric just shrugged. "Don't mention it."

Kendra smiled. "I'll try not to." Suddenly the smile slipped off her face, to be replaced by a look of intense fear. "Ced-"

"I heard it, too." Cedric said tersely, drawing his wand and spinning to face the tent entrance. "Someone's outside." 'And merlin, please let it be who I think it is and NOT Death Eaters.' he thought (more like pleaded with the universe) as he took slow, quiet steps towards the entrance, his ears straining to hear the snapping of twigs, the crunching of fallen leaves, and the low, almost indistinct murmur of voices that, perhaps only to his wild imagination, seemed familiar-

"Drop your wands!" He cried, throwing himself out of the tent, out beyond the defensive and disguising wards he had cast on it, and jabbing his wand at the three, hazy figures standing in the dark evening gloom, which was made that much more dark by the canopy the closely packed trees made with all their branches and leaves.

"You drop YOUR wand!" one of the three intruders - a woman, they were ALL women - replied, while pointing her wand at his face.

"He asked you first, Parvati! Do you really think he's going to just drop his when he holds the advantage of-"

On almost a whim, Cedric lit his wand, casting bright, white light on his three unexpected visitors. On recognizing them, he relaxed entirely, and let his wand drop to his side.

It was Parvati and Padma Patil, and Hermione Granger.

Not a second later and Cedric received three, very quick hugs in succession, and he realized he was grinning, and that the three women were beaming.

"Right, well, it's great to see you again." Cedric addressed them, growing serious. "But we shouldn't hang around out here, especially not when you found me so quickly. Because if you did, the Death Eaters can, too."

"You weren't expecting us?" Hermione said, looking surprised and disappointed as she, along with Parvati and Padma, followed Cedric into the tent.

"I was." he said, a little defensive. "But I expected you to show up here a lot later. How did you find me, my exact location, specifically, so fast?"

"You aren't the only one Dumbledore's been teaching to use ancient, latin magic." Hermione said proudly, and a tad bit SMUGLY. "I detected a great deal of magical energy swirling around in one place - sort of a big sphere in my mind's eye - and I knew that had to be your camp."

"The Death Eaters don't like ancient magic, much, so don't worry, they won't be finding you - us - any time soon with the same trick." Padma assured Cedric with a pat on the arm, and an amused smirk at his slack jaw on his hearing Hermione's explanation.

"Erm- Cedric, who's this?" Parvati said suddenly, eyeing Kendra with surprise and wariness, who was in turn eyeing the three women with fear and even a little panic.

"Forced conscript." Cedric said shortly. "Her name is Kendra Abernathy. Her mother is...being held by Death Eater forces. As soon as we reach the backup headquarters, I'm going to see if we can't figure out where she is, and get her out of their hands and back to Kendra." That last part, he said while looking at the girl herself, earning him a bright smile and eyes full of gratitude, and Cedric almost hated himself for giving her that hope.

He knew how the Death Eaters operated. It was more likely than not that they had killed Kendra's mother - and possibly even BEFORE sending Kendra to Grimmauld Place - because the woman had been a tool to ensure Kendra's initial cooperation, and would not be needed for any reason afterwards.

Seeing Hermione's brown eyes narrowed at him, and the frown on her lips that was both angry and strangely relieved, Cedric knew without a doubt that the bushy-haired woman had come to the same conclusion as Cedric about Tess Abernathy's fate, and that she was just as conflicted as him about whether or not Kendra should be given any kind of hope on the matter.

"Kendra, this is Parvati Patil, Padma Patil, and Hermione Granger." Cedric introduced to the girl, almost having to force himself to look her in the eyes now. "These are some of those friends I was talking about meeting up with from the Order."

Kendra just looked even more fearfully at the women - especially when they started trying to talk to her, and in tones Cedric recognized as their talking-to-small-children voices - and Cedric wondered if they were going to have to have another talk so soon after the last.

Thankfully, the women were rather sharp, and they got the hint that their efforts with Kendra were just making things worse, and they instead turned to Cedric with a topic of discussion that he had known had to be discussed, but had been hoping to NOT do so until much, much later.

It was Hermione who opened it up with, after the four had seated themselves around a small, round, wooden table near the fireplace, "We need to talk about Grimmauld Place." She looked from person to person in the heavy silence that followed her proclamation, her brown eyes holding the same haunted look that was in Padma and Parvati's eyes - and, Cedric suspected, in his own as well. "We need to compare notes, see if we can't sort out at least most of who survived and who- who didn't. And we need to try and figure out, also, just how the Death Eaters even managed to get into the building to begin with, considering the Fidelius, and the fact that Dumbledore was the sole Secret-Keeper." Hermione barreled on, in what was typical for her in times of stress. "I mean, if Dumbledore had died, the charm would have made all of us - everyone he ever brought into the protection - Secret-Keepers as well, and then one of us-"

"Like Cho." Parvati put in, spitting the name like a curse.

"-could have gone ahead and revealed it to the Death Eaters, but seeing as Dumbledore has clearly NOT been dead these past months..." Hermione finished her ramble as if she hadn't been interrupted at all.

"It means that the Fidelius is worthless." Padma sighed, slipping her hand into Hermione's, and looking far more worried, alarmed, and afraid than even that realization should have called for. Cedric knew why. He knew that Padma and Hermione had a daughter out in the world, somewhere, under the protection of the Fidelius Charm (among others). And if the Death Eaters had somehow found a way to disrupt and bypass that most powerful, most ultimate of protective charms, then their child was completely vulnerable.

"It's not entirely unexpected, is it?" Parvati said quietly, sending her sister and sister-in-law a look of what was likely supposed to be comfort, but came across more like an expression of sickness to Cedric. "I mean, the Death Eaters have had the wizarding world, the Ministry, under their total control for YEARS now, which means they've had complete, unrestricted access to the Department of Mysteries, too. Who knows what there even is in that place, what the Death Eaters have been studying and learning in there? Maybe they uncovered, or DIscovered, something that enabled them to beat the Fidelius."

"That's actually a solid theory." Cedric agreed. "I'll accept that until anyone finds out otherwise."

"Right." Hermione nodded. "The how doesn't even matter, I suppose. It happened, and that's that. We just have to deal with it."

"And how ARE we going to deal with it?" Padma said intently, eyes fixed imploringly on her wife.

"Melinda's going to be fine." Hermione responded soothingly. "Even without the Fidelius to protect her, the anonymity and isolation of her location will protect her. No one, not even Dumbledore, knows where she is." She glanced at Cedric, both in apology and in wariness. "She's not even in the country, anyway, and Voldemort doesn't have even near enough forces to try moving into OTHER countries. He's just started trying to secure the other half of THIS country, honestly; the muggle population of Britain."

"Right, right." Padma smiled shakily. "You're right, of course. I just can't help but-"

"-worry. Neither can I." Hermione finished for her wife. "But if we were to spend every waking moment worrying, we'd never get anything done."

"So, who survived, and who didn't?" Cedric broke the silence that followed Hermione's words. "Dumbledore definitely made it out of there, the Marauders I saw go down an alley, Snape survived - though he went away with some of the Death Eaters, what with having to maintain his cover - and the last I saw of Tracy, she was dueling with Pansy out on the street...and..."

"And she was getting her pale ass handed to her." Parvati finished, which, while being WHAT Cedric had wanted to say, had definitely not been HOW he had wanted to say it. "Pansy's nearly on par with Ginny. She's a monster - in more ways than one."

"Did anyone see Hannah?" Padma questioned. "I never even saw her come out the front door, before...before the place came down."

"I didn't see her come out, either." Cedric offered hesitantly. "But that doesn't mean she didn't when we weren't looking. Or that she didn't find some other way out, or - if she was in there when it all came down - that she didn't survive the collapse."

"And we know for certain that Fred, George, Bill, and Charlie are alive and well." Hermione said. "What with their being all over the country these last few months searching for Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes."

"At least there's ONE they won't have to search for." said Parvati, shuddering in disgust. "That snake of his, Nagini. Though, if Snape was just willing to throw his cover to the wind he could probably get off a Killing Curse at the thing, no problem."

"And if he did that, he'd never get away alive." Padma snorted, shaking her head at her twin. "Besides being our spy, he's one of our most valuable assets. He's the only true Potions Master we have on our side, and a pretty good Healer to boot, which, again, makes him valuable, because we don't have too many Healers on our side. Although," she paused, her eyes glazing over with sadness. "Hannah was learning how to be one."

"I'm sure Hannah's fine." Parvati spoke, though with an almost dismissive air about her that earned her a glare from Hermione.

"If Snape can get past what happened with the Marauders, why can't YOU get past what Hannah did to-" Padma started furiously, rounding on her twin.

Cedric backed his chair up a good three feet from the table; he knew this argument well, as did everyone in the Order, and it was NOT one that anyone with any common sense wanted to hang around and watch.

"Hannah STOLE-" Parvati began, all but spitting her words - her anger.

"There's no such thing as stealing - or CHEATING - if you weren't even together!" Padma retorted, slapping a hand on the table.

"We WERE together at the time!" cried Parvati. "Dean and I were together, then along came Hannah to lure him into a CLEARLY sexual encounter, which led to their suddenly saying THEY were together, which-"

"You were NOT together!" Hermione jumped in, exasperation permeating her voice. "You told us all at the time that you and Dean were 'taking a break'! Which is the exact OPPOSITE of being together!"

"Exactly! Merlin bless your eidetic memory, sweetie!" Padma exclaimed, kissing her wife's cheek before turning back to glare at Parvati. "That is EXACTLY what you said to us at the time, no getting around it!"

Suddenly, interruption came from an unexpected source, which, miraculously, halted all conversation, stopping the argument in its tracks - a feat which had never before been done.

Kendra, staring at them with wide eyes from over in her cot, said loudly (and incredulously), "You people are supposed to be saving the world?"

Amidst a lot of flushed faces, half-hearted murmurs, and no eye contact, the members of the Order of the Phoenix resumed their seats.

* * *

Three Months Later

* * *

"Are you...certain you want to do this, Dumbledore?"

Albus Dumbledore peered gravely over his long, laced fingers at the highly anxious, disturbed, and even fearful man sitting across from him at the table in the muggle coffee shop just two minutes shy of midnight. The powerful old wizard let out a sigh and said, his tone firm but weary, his expression unyielding but resigned, "This war has been going on for nearly ten years now, Edward - though, at this point, I do not believe it can even be called a war anymore - and too many lives have been lost in it, too many innocent people have been made to suffer. Too many families have been torn apart, too many children have been subjected to unspeakable horrors - or have been forced to commit the horrors themselves." Albus bowed his head, closing his exhausted and very, very old and anguished blue eyes. "Yes..." he said softly, more to himself than to the man whose company he shared. "This is the only choice we have left to us, the only move we have left to play against Voldemort...SHE is the only thing we have left to put into the playing field."

"I know things are desperate," Edward conceded quietly. "I know the Order has been down to hit and runs, to guerrilla tactics, these last few weeks, and I know spirits are lower than ever just trying to get a win under our side's belt..." Edward paused a long moment before finishing off with, "but are things really so desperate that we need to go and let HER loose on the world - the magical AND the muggle - and with a wand, no less?"

"Yes." Dumbledore replied, just as a quietly. "I do know how she is, I HAVE been reading every report the hospital's staff - which includes all of yours - has been sending to me over the last eleven years concerning her."

"I doubt that." Edward nearly growled. "If you had been keeping up to date with the happenings of HER, you'd know that we CANNOT do this - horridly losing the war or not. Prophecy or not." he added, his expression turning to something very close to disdain (or perhaps disgust).

"One way or another, in a week or in another ten years, the prophecy will be fulfilled!" Dumbledore snapped, his hands coming apart and turning into fists that slammed down on the surface of the table, and with such a force that both their coffee mugs jumped several centimeters into the air. "But it cannot be fulfilled if she is wasting away in a padded room wearing a straitjacket!"

Edward, rather than having startled at the old wizard's reaction, slowly sat back in his seat, flipped a particularly long lock of dark hair out of his eyes, and smiled. "If you had really been reading those reports, Dumbledore, you'd know that she isn't exactly wasting away in that room of hers. Quite the contrary. And the room isn't padded - the muggles passed a law against those damnable rooms and that treatment a few years ago." he couldn't seem to help but add, while letting out a genuinely amused chuckle.

"Regardless," Dumbledore allowed, the tension draining from his body as quickly as the blood was returning to his face. "we need her. And once we have her, it's my hope that, between Sirius, Remus, Severus, and a few other choice individuals who have the capability to form some kind of a connection with her, that some repairs can be made to her mind - and quickly - so that she might better respond to her training."

"I've seen some impossible things in this world, Dumbledore," Edward started slowly. "done both by muggles and by wizards, by technology and by magic, but the one thing I know for sure that can't be done by either is bringing any amount of sanity - doesn't matter how little or how great - back to that woman's mind. If I had the Galleons, I'd bet you a thousand the first thing she's going to do when you get her out of her room is either try to kill you, or try and make a break for it."

Edward fixed Dumbledore with a rather hard look all of a sudden. "I'm telling you, you can't train her. You can't teach her, you can't ORDER HER. She's not a domesticated, or even a stray, dog. She's a wild wolf. She does whatever she wants, whenever she wants, and for whatever inscrutable reasons she has in that head of hers - and no one, not you, not me, hell, not even Voldemort himself holding her under the Imperius Curse could get her to do any different. Even when she's agreeing with you, or doing what you ask of her, she's really NOT listening to you or obeying you, it's just that whatever she wants to do or wants to have happen just HAPPENS to coincide with what you want from her. She might as well be an alien, there's just no way to know or understand her logic or how she reasons things."

"And did you forget," Edward pressed on relentlessly, ruthlessly, even, in his quest to NOT, under any circumstances, allow Dumbledore to let the crazed woman loose on the world. "that she murdered her aunt and uncle when she was eleven? The uncle was maybe understandable, given everything he'd been doing to her over the course of her life - all kinds of abuses: food and water deprivation, beatings and rapes - but the aunt? And that was just the start for her! Do you have any recollection at all about just how many hospital staff members and even other patients she's killed or permanently crippled over the years - most of which she's managed to do even at times when she was wearing either handcuffs or a straitjacket, AND was surrounded by guards?"

Edward leaned forward in his seat, looking the Headmaster in the eyes as he hurled out his final point of contention. "Even YOU decided you didn't want her coming to Hogwarts at the time, all those years ago, because of the danger she would have posed to the other students. It was mostly- no, ENTIRELY YOUR DECISION to put her in the hospital to begin with - and to put myself and other wizards and witches on the staff to keep an eye on her."

"I know - I do remember - but now we have no choice." Dumbledore reiterated, after a very long, very heavy silence. "And we also have nothing left to lose; I doubt that whatever she could unleash on the world could be any more terrible and damaging than what Voldemort has accomplished in this past decade, particularly in light of his first, major move against the muggle world last September."

"Famous last words." Edward groaned, his head falling into his hands. He stood abruptly and clapped his hands. "All right, I'll take you to her. Best just to get it done and over with. But when she's out there doing whatever she's going to get up to doing - and it won't be anything good - you just remember that I did my best to persuade you against uncaging her."

"I shall endeavor to do just that." Dumbledore promised, similarly rising to his feet and slipping out of the booth. "I'll make the preparations with the Order, and I will see you at headquarters in three days' time."

Edward only nodded in parting, and, Dumbledore wondered to himself, as he followed suit, if he was not going to make the greatest mistake of his life.


	2. Balancing Acts

Life, Amanda Potter knew at her very core, was all about balance.

The first eleven years of her life had been spent in terror and pain, and in having nothing but doing everything: cleaning, cooking, and just generally servicing the various needs of her aunt and uncle.

But then, around her eleventh birthday, things had changed.

Strange letters had started arriving, and their arrival had made things at number four, Privet Drive, particularly when it came to her "relationship" with her uncle, so much worse. Worse than she ever could have imagined things could get for herself. That was when the thoughts had started to bubble up in her mind. Thoughts of running, of hiding, of taking a chance outside of number four and living on the streets, or in some orphanage despite all that her aunt and uncle had told her about how lucky she was to have been taken in by them, and how grateful she should have been for it.

And Amanda would have taken those chances, would have acted on those thoughts the moment she started having them, had it not been for the fact that it hadn't just been HERSELF at the time. She'd been pregnant, and just weeks away from giving birth. She'd needed that CERTAINTY in life at number four, no matter how horrible it was, for her baby's sake. What little food she got, what water she stole from the sink or shower in the bathroom, she had needed in order to keep her child alive, growing, and as healthy as it could be under the circumstances.

But after...after her baby had been born - a girl, who Amanda had given the name "Rue" - and after Rue had anonymously been left outside an orphanage for girls by her aunt and uncle (a fact that Amanda had learned only because her aunt and uncle had used it to mentally and emotionally torture her), Amanda had had nothing keeping her from making a decision that would change her life forever (and, she had hoped at the time, potentially save it): she killed her aunt and uncle. Slipped into their room at night after a stop by the kitchen to pick up a cleaver, slit her aunt's throat, and then threw all her weight onto the blade to make sure it went right through her uncle's fat heart.

She'd gone a little overboard, then. Not with horror. With joy. With relief, and with the freedom she had secured for herself. She had taken some time to repeatedly stab her uncle's corpse, counting each one until she finally just LOST count, and her arms had tired, and her hands had gone numb, and only then had she stopped.

Then Amanda had found a return to reason and thought, and she had given a great deal of it to her cousin, Dudley. She had seriously considered killing him, too. In just finishing what she had started that night. But, in the end, she had decided against it. Had decided to let the boy live. He had never done anything to hurt her, despite being a Dursley. He had tended to keep away from her, to go quiet whenever they WERE in the same room, and he never really looked at her. When they had made eye contact...

Sometimes she thought he had known that what was happening to her was bad and wrong. Sometimes she even thought he had even been trying to help her, to be nice to her as best he could. How else could she explain the times Dudley had proclaimed himself full of an ice cream and tossed the half-eaten thing to her?

Maybe that had been wishful thinking on her part. Maybe it still was, because she still thought about him, about those times, even now, even all these years later. Even now, Amanda still wondered whether or not she should be glad she hadn't killed him. That was a rare emotion for her, a rare circumstance, at any rate.

All she had was the hope that, somehow, it had served the balance to let her cousin live. Perhaps he was out there in the world serving the balance himself. Working as a surgeon to repair the damages done to people by others who sought to cause pain and chaos without any regard for the balance.

But if that hope wasn't valid, if Amanda's letting Dudley live had only caused more imbalance in the universe...well, then there would at least be some small balance in all these years Dudley must have spent in agony over the deaths of his parents. Perhaps his suffering was even EQUAL to Amanda's! There would be definite and substantial balance in that.

In any event, the first eleven years of Amanda's life were long over; the life of a slave, a nothing, a doll to be played with, a puppet whose strings were all held by people who really shouldn't have been holding them.

It was over, and it had all balanced out, as was Amanda's belief in the way of the universe, for the NEXT eleven years of her life (past - her twenty-second birthday was coming up in a few days) had been spent in a soft bed, with access to amazing foods in large quantities, books and a television of her very own.

That was balance.

But there was still another balance, a larger balance, that Amanda needed to satisfy - and had not been able to while living in the place she was now; a place where the people who took care of it, and her, wouldn't let her leave.

She'd tried, many times, to do just that over the years, but to no avail.

This balance Amanda was so increasingly desperate to attend to was the one her uncle had started. He had repeatedly raped her, but the balance had come into play and had given her a daughter for her troubles. And now Amanda had to find Rue, had to see her, hold her, raise her. As long as Amanda WASN'T DOING THAT, the balance was tipped much, much too far to one side. So far that it was dangerous, hazardous...agonizing.

Amanda was in agony for every second she wasn't doing what the balance demanded of her, and in even more agony that only mothers could feel.

It was double the pain for her, and it was all because things were out of balance. Triple the pain, really, when she thought - and she tried so hard not to - of Rue, of wherever she was now, and whatever she must be going through without Amanda there for her. Without Amanda there to care for her and to love her.

It wasn't BALANCE, and the ones who kept trying to stop Amanda from leaving, from leaving to go and satisfy the balance, were themselves causing further imbalance, in that by preventing her from leaving, they were depriving Rue of the protection (physical, mental, emotional) and the love that she needed from Amanda, and without these things and without Amanda herself, Rue's life was in constant danger of ending, or, if not ending, existing in a state of only pain and fear, much as Amanda's first eleven years had been.

This was why Amanda took their lives whenever she could. It satisfied that balance; they in their actions risked Rue's life, so Amanda stole from them theirs.

And Amanda would continue to redress this balance until she found Rue, and became the mother to her that she was supposed to be - the mother who could keep the scales leveled more permanently.

But in the meantime, so long as these people were keeping Amanda here in this building, this HOSPITAL (as if she needed fixing), she would continue to take full advantage of everything inside it, as per the balance.

This included the window in her room that looked out onto the sunny and colorful countryside of London, which could be seen clearly in the distance. A window that, while being sufficiently small enough to not allow Amanda to escape through it, was NOT small enough to prevent a snake from coming and going as it pleased - or as Amanda commanded it.

*Come. It is safe for you now.* Amanda had her head out the window, and was looking happily down at the snake in the grass directly below the sill.

*The last time you said that, I almost lost half my tail.* the snake huffed, only reluctantly slithering up to the window.

*You ARE a tail, Sapphire.* giggled Amanda. *There's nothing ELSE to your body BUT tail.*

*Exactly! I almost lost half of ME! Have YOU ever lost half of yourself?*

*Yes.* Amanda said seriously, while Sapphire wound herself around Amanda's wrist and allowed herself to be taken over to the bed, which was all white sheets, white pillows, and white blankets. Amanda took some time to settle herself, cross-legged, on her bed before saying, with a frowning look down at Sapphire, *Where is Emerald? She was supposed to come back with you.*

*We decided on a better plan than yours.* Sapphire replied, almost flippant in her manner. *Instead of the two of us going all the way to London and then all the way back here, Emerald will stay in London - stay to keep watching your young for you - I will stay here with you, and she and I will meet every three days at a point halfway between both locations. She will pass on her news to me, and I will come back here and pass it on to you.*

Amanda considered for a moment. *Wouldn't the wait for me still be the same as if you took the whole round trip?*

*Do you want to hear about your Rue, or do you want to keep questioning my genius?* Sapphire snapped, winding herself so tight around Amanda's wrist that she cut off circulation.

*You're right. It's genius.* Amanda nodded quickly. *Tell me about her.* Sapphire relaxed, allowing blood to return to Amanda's hand.

*She lives at number seventeen, Mulberry Drive.* Sapphire began, her voice dripping with as much smugness as her fangs did venom. *It took some time to find her, even with following your suggestion about the human computer - do you know how hard, how unbelievably SLOW it is to type with your face? - but we did. And from there, the rest was easy. Stow away in her backpack to watch her at school, hide on the very top of the bookshelf to watch her in her bedroom, various cabinets for the kitchen, and under the sofa for the sitting room.*

*I should change your name to 007.* Amanda laughed. *Emerald can be 009.*

*I should be 009.* Sapphire said quickly. *Nine is better than seven.*

*But in a top ten list, seven is better than nine.* Amanda countered.

*We're not a top ten list.* Sapphire scoffed.

*But we could be.*

There was a long silence.

*Okay.* Sapphire said finally. *We're a top ten list. I'm 007, which is better than 009.*

*Okay.* agreed Amanda. She paused. Then, *What did you learn about my daughter? How is her life? How is she? What does she look like? How are her school marks?* She paused again. *What is her favorite food? Does she have friends? What is she good at?*

*Too much for comfort, seems to be good from what I saw of the school papers in her room, happy and healthy, fair skin with your green eyes (but yellow hair unlike your red), average I suppose, pizza, many that I've seen, zoology.*

Amanda smiled and cocked her head at the last answer. *Zoology?*

Sapphire gave a very human nod. *She's a gentle one, and very curious; she found me hiding once, and she treated me quite nicely. Even if she DID take me out of the house.* she added, sounding more amused than offended by the memory.

Overwhelming joy filled Amanda's heart, and with it came a wide smile and a downpour of tears. This was everything she had wanted to hear! Her daughter - HER daughter! - was LIVING. A wonderful life full of friends, happiness, and above all, purity and innocence. Rue did not know what Amanda knew, did not suffer the life that Amanda had suffered.

And it was all thanks to Amanda, and her faithful - and regular - service of the balance. It was also REASSURING for Amanda; reassuring to know that her service was not ineffective, was not going unanswered or unrewarded, because, after all, killing people was hard work.

Hard work she might have to resume in a minute's time, as she heard footsteps and voices coming down the hall towards her room (whether or not they would PASS it was another question entirely).

"...set you up with her in the visitation lounge, but we'll be doubling the guard on her compared to what we usually have when we let her out of her room. No, triple." Ah, Edward. Amanda smiled as she recognized the first speaker. He was her favorite doctor. She had always admired him, honestly, and had never felt any need or desire to kill him - not even in pursuit of the balance. That he took her so seriously like this was just one reason for Amanda's admiration of him.

Triple the guards! Amanda felt giddy at the thought, and wondered just how many she would manage to kill during this unexpected change in her daily routine before they would manage to sedate her.

"Is she really that dangerous?" said the other voice, a young man's voice, full of nervousness and even a bit of fear. "Even now, after all these years that she's been in here?"

But who WAS that other voice? That other young man speaking to Edward as they drew nearer and nearer to Amanda's room? Amanda frowned and shook her head. She didn't recognize it at all. And...she was curious. Why would someone she didn't know at all be coming to visit her, when no one - NO ONE - from the outside had ever come to visit her in all her years of staying here?

"...probably a good thing you didn't bring the wife and baby girl along with you on this, Mr. Dursley - no telling WHAT Amanda would do to them..."

Mr. Dursley? MR. Dursley? Mr. DURSLEY?

In her shock, Amanda's jaw nearly fell all the way off to land on her mattress. With her aunt and uncle long-since dead at her hands - with a certain satisfaction, she might add - there was only one possible person who this "Mr. Dursley" could be: Dudley.

At last, Amanda would learn what she had wondered for so many years now: whether or not she should have killed Dudley along with her aunt and uncle, and whether or not she should kill him now.

But Amanda was insulted, angered, at Edward's insinuation that she would EVER hurt a baby; a CHILD. No, that, Amanda would never do, not even for the balance. Because there WAS no balance in the harming of a child! That was the whole point, the whole LESSON of Amanda's existence! All her years spent under her aunt and uncle's cruel hands had created a gross imbalance, their actions being against the balance in the worst of ways!

Amanda would never lay a finger on a child, and if she ever caught anyone else at it - or even just HEARD about it - she would kill them on the spot.

That was why one Elly Emerson, who had once lived nine doors down from Amanda, had had her neck snapped and her fingers broken by Amanda two years ago in the bathroom.

It wasn't about sadism or cruelty, it was about balance; Ms. Emerson and her fingers had caused irreparable harm to a boy (her own son, from what Amanda had heard in the woman's mutterings), and so Amanda had broken each finger individually, one after the other, as surely as Ms. Emerson had put scars - both mental and physical - on her child, and then ensured that Ms. Emerson wouldn't be able to put scars on any more children in the future.

As for this wife of Dudley's...Amanda didn't see any reason why she should hurt the woman. Surely not for the balance. Dudley had not, after all, killed Amanda's wife (not that she had one - yet; because she knew she WAS going to need one in the future, after she returned to her Rue, because Rue couldn't have a truly balanced life with SOLELY Amanda, with just one parent, just one mother), and so Amanda saw no need to take from him HIS in repayment.

And until such time as Amanda DID find any reason to hurt the wife, she WOULDN'T hurt the wife, because to do so without reason, without NEED, would only upset the balance, and even cause harm to the baby as a side effect, which to Amanda would be an intolerable result.

"'Is she really that dangerous?'" Edward repeated Dudley Dursley's question, his voice very close at hand now - just outside Amanda's door, in fact. "To you, Mr. Dursley, yes, she is. Now, Perkins here is going to take you to the lounge to wait, as well as to ensure all the proper security measures are being taken, and I'll see if I can't get Amanda to come along with this."

Amanda couldn't help but snort at what she was hearing. True, she was QUITE the dangerous young lady, but whether or not she would be dangerous to DUDLEY remained to be seen, and until she had figured that out, herself, she wasn't going to mess up even a hair on his fat, blond head. After all, Amanda would NEVER risk causing imbalance, no matter how small or great.

Two quick, sharp knocks came at Amanda's door, and Edward called in to her, "Amanda? Could I come in and talk to you for a minute?"

"I want to see my cousin!" Amanda called back to him, smiling. "If I allow you in, will you allow me to see him?"

There was silence - a silence in which Sapphire took the opportunity to hiss, *I'll get to hiding.* and slither under the bed to safety - then, "If I promise to allow you to see him, will you promise not to hurt him?"

This was another reason why Amanda rather liked Edward: he knew balance. He respected it, and he understood it.

He understood that everything was about balance, about trade offs and checks and keeping scales leveled.

"Yes, I promise." Amanda said without hesitation, because she could MAKE and KEEP that promise safely, if only for now, and not betray the balance with it.

"Alright, I'm coming in." Edward replied, and not a moment later did the door open, and enter her room he did. He looked as he always did: nice clothes, his name tag pinned to his shirt denoting him as a doctor, his long, sleek black hair slicked back, his chocolate eyes (Amanda loved chocolate) showing that he was relaxed, sincere, and friendly - and sincere in his friendliness.

That was why Edward asked Amanda what he did next, after having come further into her room to seat himself beside her on the bed (though he was sure to keep a foot of space between their shoulders; he knew Amanda hated to be touched, and he knew what happened to anyone - he himself not even being an exception - who did so).

"How did you sleep last night?" he asked in soothing tones, his eyes fixed on her with only concern. "Did you have a dream again?"

Amanda smiled at Edward, paying no attention to the four men standing in her doorway other than an acknowledging, initial glance. "About the snake man, Voldemort, and the magical war for wizarding Britain? The ones that always make THIS hurt?" At "this" she raised a hand to tap the strange, lightning bolt-shaped scar on her forehead.

"Yes." Edward nodded, and returned her smile with an indulgent one of his very own. "Those dreams."

Amanda did not answer. Instead, she looked again to the men in her doorway. Edward didn't fail to miss where she was looking. "Amanda, you seem to be in a good mood today, a really COOPERATIVE mood, and I need you to keep that up if you want to talk to your cousin. No attacking anyone today, okay? No one here is going to touch you, so long as you don't try to hurt them."

"Okay." Amanda allowed, for the truth was, she had no intention of hurting any of the men here with her NOW, because she wasn't STUPID, and she knew that to attack them was to lose her chance to get to her cousin, which, according to the demands of the balance, was a chance that she absolutely could not pass up: the chance to either gain the satisfaction that came with the knowledge of a great balance born of years past, or to CORRECT a great IMBALANCE born of years past.

Either way, she really had to be there.

But AFTER - AFTER ascertaining the results of her years-ago decision, AFTER learning whether or not those results would demand that she kill her cousin Dudley - Amanda WAS going to do her best to kill or maim as many of the guards as she could, so as to maintain the balance between her own captivity and Rue's well-being.

Surely Edward understood THAT.

"No, I need to know that you understand, I need to hear you say it." Edward chided. "I need you to promise me that you won't hurt any of the staff today."

"I promise not to hurt any of the staff today." Amanda dutifully repeated. 'For now.' she added silently to herself, repressing a sigh. Apparently, Edward did NOT quite understand the balance and all that it entailed as well as she had always thought. That was fine, though. She forgave him for his lapse of understanding. This was a big day for Amanda, and a big day for the balance itself, considering she would likely be giving to it her greatest payment yet, doing it the greatest of services she had done to date.

"Good." Edward nodded, though he still looked more wary than relieved. "Now - the dream?"

"I wrote about it in my dream diary." Amanda said simply, raising a slender finger to point at the aforementioned diary, which sat beneath the lamp on her nightstand. "Like always." she added pridefully.

"And that's good." Edward replied, gazing at her warmly. "And I'm going to take it and read all about the dream later - like always - but you know that sometimes more details come back to you after a long break, after having time to think about it. Even just the act of talking about it rather than writing it down can bring back more information about it than you realized you had retained at the time."

"Details are important." Amanda said coyly, flashing a smile.

Alarm passed over Edward's face. "They are." he agreed slowly, and with more wariness than ever. He took a long moment simply to stare at Amanda. Then, "Amanda, I can tell how good a mood you're in, so could I ask you...are you in a good enough mood to play games?"

Amanda blinked in confusion. "Are you asking me if I'm playing games with you?"

"Are you?" Edward said quietly, looking suddenly very intense and serious.

"Sometimes I play games." Amanda admitted with a laugh. "As you very well know, Edward."

"I do know. What about today?" prompted Edward. "Will there be any games today?"

Amanda shook her head, causing her long, dark red hair to shimmer in the morning sunlight coming in through her window. "No games today." she said, seriously and earnestly. And truthfully; today was too important to waste playing games.

Although, when she thought of Sapphire, who at that moment was hidden under her bed (and in a perfect position to crawl up Edward's leg)...

No! Amanda thought to herself very firmly. No games. Not today. Let nothing distract or keep her from what she had to accomplish today.

"If we're done talking about games," she started coolly. "I can tell you about my dream, and then you can take me to my cousin."

Edward shifted another half a foot away from Amanda at her tone. "Right, of course." he said quickly. "Tell me."

"Voldemort told Lucius Malfoy that there was a change on the horizon." Amanda began, recalling her dream as best she could. "He said that the insurrection was finally breaking down, that the Order was finally about ready to give up and hide forever, and that he would finally be completely unopposed once that happened, and that he would be able to start making major strides towards taking the muggle world."

"And...that's all?" said Edward, after a lengthy silence.

Amanda glared. "Yes. I'm keeping my promises, now you keep yours."

"Okay, okay." Edward stood very quickly. "Let's go meet your cousin."

Edward led Amanda out into the hallway, with two of the guards in front, and the other two falling in behind her. Out in the hall, Amanda was met with the sight of four MORE guards, all of whom had tranquilizer guns at the ready.

"Flattering." she commented with a growing smile. They really weren't messing around today, she realized as, in addition, one guard stepped forward to put her in handcuffs (and tighten them so much that she felt the hard metal cutting into her wrists). Usually they waited until reaching her destination to slap her in cuffs.

What was NOT flattering was something Amanda happened to notice while looking around aimlessly and humming the theme to "Star Wars" to herself as she was being escorted through the hospital: one of her rear guards was staring at her, and in a place that, any other day, would have earned him two of her fingers shoved into his eye sockets in repayment for his perversion.

As it was, a different tactic would be needed to put an end to this treatment she had been enduring for likely the past three minutes of walking.

Amanda stopped in her tracks and turned to face Edward with such ferocious speed that her mane of blood red hair whirled out behind her and caught one of her guards in the face, fueled as she was by her fury and disgust; she ignored the bristling of tranq guns that her actions caused.

"My agreement was for my cousin," she said coldly. "not for one of your MEN who can't stop staring at my ass."

Most of the other guards all looked to the offender in shock and disbelief - that he would try and get away with looking at HER butt (HERS, of all people's!) more so than because of the fact that it was an impropriety to do so.

Edward, to Amanda's further admiration, was concerned with the indecency of the treatment alone, and he quickly - after doing some growling, some shouting, and some finger-poking in the chest - sent the offender off before taking the man's place in the formation himself.

'Well,' Amanda thought, as she resumed her course for the visitation lounge. 'that worked out nicely.' True, the punishment had not been what she would have liked it to have been, but still, a punishment HAD been rendered, and so the balance had been satisfied well and solidly by Edward, to the best of his abilities.

When they finally stopped in a wide corridor on the ground floor, and moved through a side door into the visitor's lounge, Amanda was, admittedly, very confused.

There was only a young man - tall, blue-eyed, with tufty blond hair - wearing jeans and a T-shirt with some sports logo on it, sitting around on the sofa and sipping from a glass of water.

This was wrong, this was all very wrong, Amanda thought, becoming panicked and worried now. Where was Dudley? Where was her cousin? Where was he?! The balance- it needed to be- SHE needed to be- where-

'DAMN IT ALL!' she raged, preparing to spin around towards the nearest guard and catch him with a double-fisted uppercut to the jaw PURELY to start off the process of exhausting herself of the raw, overwhelming emotions whirling around inside of her now.

Amanda felt like CRYING, this was so horrible, so- so- how could the balance have FAILED to deliver her the one she needed to be with in order to serve it? How could SHE fail, now, for the first time ever, to satisfy that which was required of her by the balance?

How could this be?

Was it simply Amanda's fault? Was it SHE who didn't understand what the balance wanted of her? But..she had never failed to understand BEFORE! Why now? Why, this time, would she NOT KNOW?

Why-

"Amanda?"

At the sound of her name, Amanda was wrenched from her storming thoughts, and she realized that, first, yes, she WAS crying hot tears, and, second, that the voice responsible for uttering her name had issued from the tall blond man (who had risen from the couch to stand before her), and THIRD, that the voice coming from the tall blond man was the same voice she had heard from the hallway earlier while she had been in her room, all of which meant...

"Dudley?" Amanda choked, looking him up and down as disbelief- no, as downright SHOCK coursed through her slender and curvaceous body. "What HAPPENED to you? You lost 200 pounds! Where- where- where's the rest of you?"

Dudley mirrored her in sweeping his gaze up and down her very changed - and very adult - form, though he, unlike her, seemed to be QUITE fearful and anxious as he did so.

As the two sized each other up, Amanda's not-so-honor guard ringed the perimeter of the lounge, and took up other various positions that would enable them to quickly intervene should things turn ugly between the cousins.

"I grew up. Got over myself, went to college - I just graduated a couple of weeks back, in fact - and got married. What happened to you?" Dudley finally responded, in a timid voice.

"I killed Vernon and Petunia." Amanda answered, after having recovered, as well. She threw herself back into a plush armchair, reclining in it sideways, with her legs dangling over one of the arms, and her back propped against the other arm.

Dudley flinched violently at her mention of the night she had saved herself from a life of torture and abuse, and he made a big show of sitting himself back down on the sofa before reestablishing eye contact with her.

"Why are you here?" Amanda questioned. 'Will I have to kill you, or not?'

Dudley did not immediately respond. He took several deep breaths, looked down at his hands, looked everywhere BUT at Amanda, then, at last, he looked at her once more and said, in a near whisper: "I knew."

Amanda's heart skipped a beat. "What did you know?" she asked, though knowing perfectly well WHAT her cousin was telling her he knew. She wanted to hear him say it, and say it to her face.

"I knew what...what mom and...dad...did to you." Dudley said, pausing and gasping with each word, like it was a struggle to get them out. "All those years...I mean...I...You...You know that my room shared a wall with yours." he finished in a rush, and all in one breath.

"It did." Amanda acknowledged softly, swinging her legs around to sit properly in the armchair - and, even more, to lean forward in it, her handcuffed hands clenched into fists in her lap (every guard in the room visibly tensed at the sight). "So you're telling me...that for eleven years...every single night...you listened to your father raping me...and you did nothing...and told no one; not me, not a neighbor, not a teacher, and not the police. But. Especially. Not. Me." she spat - literally - those last four words. "I could have used the comfort, I could have used the knowledge that someone else knew. I could have talked to you, you could have made yourself useful and given me a hug sometime, or even stood up for me. You could have protected me!"

Dudley had been shaking his head all throughout her speech, looking terrified and ashamed, but now he burst out with, "Amanda, what could I have even done?! I was just a kid-"

" _I_ was just a kid!" Amanda shrieked, launching herself out of her chair and across the room. On reaching Dudley, she pinned him to the sofa with a bare foot on his chest, and bent low over him so as to grab his blond hair in her handcuffed hands and yank his head back so they were nose to nose. "I was just a kid; ME, ME, ME! I was just a kid when your MOTHER beat me over the head with a frying pan! When your FATHER put his hands on my throat and shoved his-" Her words were drowned out by the sounds of firing weapons and the shouting going on around her. "-in my-!" A dozen darts hitting her from all angles caused her to break off her rant, and in the next moment she was being hauled off of her cousin and forced to the floor.

"I was just a kid!" she screamed, struggling against both the guards pinning her down AND the tranquilizers doing their work. "What were YOU?! What were YOU?! I was just a kid, I was just a KID! I was just a...I was...a kid..."

Before all the world went dark for Amanda, she had time for one last thought.

That thought was: 'I'm glad I didn't kill him.'


	3. Answerings of a Higher Calling

"You promised you wouldn't hurt him." Edward's accusatory tones reached Amanda, who was, even now, even two days later, sitting in Edward's office with a grin on her face and an uncontrollable, bursting joy in her heart.

"I didn't hurt him!" Amanda giggled, putting her feet up on Edward's desk, so as to nudge his knickknacks and other items that called his desk home around with her big toes.

"Well," Edward said slowly, eyeing her bare feet on his desk with irritation (but not disgust; Amanda bathed every night and morning). "Considering what your usual level of violence is, and, I suppose, your IDEA of what constitutes violence is, I suppose that you really do believe that. But the fact of the matter is that you gave your cousin a slight bruising on his chest."

Mid-glee, mid-picking-up-a-pen-between-her-toes-in-an-attempt-to-write-with-it, Amanda froze, and all her good feelings left her in an instant. "What?"

Edward glanced at the two security guards flanking Amanda, before looking back to Amanda herself. "When you kicked your cousin, you left a-"

"NO!" Amanda shouted, literally falling - backwards - out of her chair, as panic and horror gripped her heart. "No, no, no...I didn't- I- I couldn't have..." How could she have DONE THIS?! How could she have caused such an imbalance? How could she, in all her years of faithful service, have done such a thing? how could she have made such a mistake? How could she have done it so terribly a disrespect when it had delivered to her the means of knowing, and possibly of amending, the results of a long-ago decision?

"Amanda!" Edward was down on the floor with her, by her side, though he was still, in his shock at her never-before-seen behavior, mindful enough not to lay a hand on her. "It was just a bruise, not even a terrible one. And I want you to know that what you're feeling right now is natural, normal, and-"

"Oh god..." Amanda moaned, as her thoughts jumped to Rue, and to the good and innocent life she had been living thanks only to Amanda's servicing of the balance. Now, now Amanda had FAILED IT, had created an imbalance, had disrespected and slighted it, and now Amanda could feel terror and shame as she realized that something terrible, something HORRIBLE, something corrupt and disgusting was going to happen to Rue, and it was all because of AMANDA, because SHE had harmed her cousin when she had had NO NEED TO HARM HIM! When he had already proven to her that he had changed his life, that he REGRETTED his behavior as a child, and that he felt SORRY for what she had gone through, and- and-

"I gather that this is not the best of times...?" an unfamiliar, soft voice filled Amanda's ears, ripping her violently from out of her storm of inner turmoil.

"We'll have to reschedule the meeting." Edward responded to the voice, looking past Amanda and up at its source. "I'm sorry, Dumbledore, but Amanda is-"

"I'm right here!" Amanda cried, lolling her head back and straining her eyes to see who Edward was talking to, to see who had come here to see HER, and wondering if it was not Dudley, returned to her so that she could hastily rectify her gross and horrific mistake.

But it wasn't Dudley, and nor was it anyone she recognized.

It was a very tall, very old man wearing a flowing blue gown of sorts, with a long, white beard that reached his waist, half-moon spectacles, and eyes that were a piercing, startling, MESMERIZING blue.

"Hello, my dear." the old man - Dumbledore, Edward had called him - spoke down to her.

"Hi." Amanda replied dazedly, still gazing into those blue eyes that were washing away all that she felt, and giving her a sense of...serenity, of calm, of... "Who are you? Why do you want to see me?" Then, "Can you take me to my cousin?"

"I believe I can accommodate you in answering the first two of your questions." Dumbledore nodded, his eyes now holding an incredible, beautiful twinkle that Amanda just could not look away from. "As for that last one...I'm certain arrangements could be made. After all, what do we have if we do not have family?"

"Take me to him! Now!" Amanda snapped, scrambling to her feet and facing the old man. "But answer my questions first!" she added quickly.

"I will answer any questions you may have." Dumbledore said patiently - and sounding not in the least bit threatened. "All I ask of you in return is that you listen to what I have to tell you."

A trade! Amanda didn't hesitate to nod her agreement, as she righted her chair before throwing herself back into it. She craned her head in her seat to look back at Dumbledore in earnest. "What do you have to tell me?"

After waving the guards out of the room (something he had never done before in all the time Amanda had known him), Edward resumed his seat behind the desk, looking, in the moment between Amanda's question, and the coming answer from Dumbledore, as if this spanning of time, this brief silence, was one upon which the beginning of the very apocalypse hinged.

Dumbledore peered at Amanda over his spectacles, drew in a breath, then...

"You're a witch, Amanda."

In the silence, Amanda looked straight ahead at Edward, then she swiveled her head back around to look at Dumbledore again.

"That's not nice." she said coldly - and very quietly - and her mind quickly began searching for a suitable insult to shoot back at the old man, for she was not going to let this go unpunished, was not going to let the balance go unsatisfied. Especially not in light of her very first imbalance made in the matter of her cousin. Maybe Amanda should be a little more heavy-handed than she usually would have been, with that in mind. She could give Dumbledore a few horrible disfigurements, perhaps, and then HE would be the one looking like some old witch, some old hag.

Yes, that would do, Amanda decided, with no small amount of satisfaction, as she rose from her chair and turned to fully face Dumbledore.

"Amanda, I meant it literally." said the old man, his expression and his tone still very calm and unconcerned as Amanda stepped towards him. "You possess great magical power."

Amanda stopped in her tracks, both because of his words, and because she was now looking into those strange eyes again, and she suddenly found herself unable, even UNWILLING, to do Dumbledore harm. "Magic?" she said curiously, somehow not even feeling concerned that she was NOT going to harm Dumbledore, and was therefore NOT going to satisfy the balance.

Dumbledore gave her a nod and a smile. "That's right. Your mother and father, Lily and James Potter, were magic, as well; they were witch and wizard."

"Okay." said Amanda, returning the smile. "How do I do magic?" This was actually really exciting, she thought. With magic, who knew what she could do? Who knew how many people she could kill? Who knew how much more easy it would become for her to serve the balance?

Certainly, with magic, her escape from this place and her return to Rue would be accomplished as easily as blinking!

She only needed to learn to use the magic from this Dumbledore, from this man who was most surely a wizard, as he said her father had been. As he said her mother had been a witch, like Amanda herself.

"I would like to say 'all in good time', but, unfortunately, we're running out of time, which is why I'm here before you now." said Dumbledore, his eyes holding an intense weariness for a brief few moments, before they brightened, and the twinkle returned to them. "There is much I have to tell you, but, I think, the most important matter to start with is that, as magic exists, so too does a magical community, hidden and isolated from the nonmagical world that you've lived in your whole life." As Dumbledore was saying all of this, he had withdrawn a thin piece of wood from his robes, used it to tap the air in front of him, and then suddenly there was a large, plush, purple armchair before him that had not been in the room a second ago, which he moved over to the side of Edward's desk with a lazy hand, then sat down in it.

"Please, sit." Dumbledore added to Amanda, gesturing to the chair she had vacated some moments ago, as if she had NOT vacated it - and certainly not for the REASONS she had done so.

Amanda took her seat, put her feet back up on the desk, then crossed her arms and looked intensely to Dumbledore. She was going to listen to him, and then he would answer her questions, and then, once she knew how to do magic, she would finally leave this place and go right to her Rue-

No, wait, she couldn't just head straight to Rue's house. Amanda needed to seek out her cousin, first, and apologize to him for hurting him when he had been so remorseful and had changed so much compared to his childhood. When he had been the first, and, at the time, the ONLY person to come and visit Amanda in her eleven years of living in this hospital.

And then, after that, she would go to Rue's house.

"Now, the magical world has been, for over a decade now, at war," Dumbledore began, his hands clasped on the desk, his blue eyes on Amanda. "and under the tyrannical reign of a man - a wizard - known as Lord Voldemort."

"I've dreamed about him!" Amanda said suddenly, the name sparking a feeling of excitement within her. "And the magical world, but I never knew they weren't just dreams."

"Well, you're quite right - they are NOT just dreams." Dumbledore inclined his head, smiling almost proudly at her. He leaned towards her, the smile leaving his face as he grew serious. That weariness was back in his eyes again. "I will be honest, even blunt with you, Amanda...I want you to come with me, and help myself and others in the fight against Voldemort, in the battle to retake the wizarding world, and free it from his cruel grasp."

Well, that was a no-brainer if Amanda had ever heard one. Going off to fight in some war she had no stake in, no training for, and would only keep her away from Rue...

"No." Amanda said simply. When Dumbledore did not look in the least bit surprised by her refusal, she shot a look at Edward. This had to be his doing. He had to be in on this, he had to have arranged this meeting, and he had to be- "You're a wizard, aren't you, Edward?"

Edward shook his head. "No, Amanda, I'm not. I'm a squib, which means a nonmagic person born of two magic parents."

"Amanda," Dumbledore said delicately, bringing her attention back to him. "I know of no way with which I can force you to participate in this war. I only hope that, after telling you your story, you will find the will, the motivation, to join me in this fight."

When Amanda said nothing, Dumbledore continued, "Shortly before your birth, a prophecy was made - a prophecy concerning both yourself and Lord Voldemort; in short, it says that, in the end, you and Voldemort will face each other, and that only the two of you have the capability to truly defeat the other - and he, believing himself to be fulfilling the terms of this prophecy, set out to kill you when you were a baby. But your parents and I hid you and the both of them from Voldemort using a very powerful enchantment. For a year, you lived. For a year, you were safe. Until, on Halloween, Voldemort came to you where you were hiding, acting on information given to him by one of his spies that he had in our ranks at the time." Dumbledore paused, and fixed Amanda with a very deliberate sort of look before going on. "Voldemort murdered your parents that night, Amanda. First your father, and then, with you watching, right there in the room, he murdered your mother. Then, he proceeded to try and murder you, his true goal all along: a one-year-old girl."

Rage...was all Amanda could feel, as those words were absorbed into her mind, and into her heart. But this was rage as she had never known before. It was not OUTRAGE, it was not even the RAGE that came from circumstances or events of the past. This was beyond even the need to bring balance, to correct an IMbalance she now knew to be that of her entire life, all of her years, all of her suffering, all of that which had sprung from Voldemort murdering her parents on that night, trying to kill her, Amanda, a CHILD, a BABY, and Amanda having done NOTHING to rectify it for all of these years she had lived (not even the fact that she now had this answer, this understanding of WHY she had had her life with the Dursleys as it had so been, mattered to her).

No, this rage, this was the urge to tear, to rip, to devour, and nothing and no one was going to stand in her way of this. Not even time and space. She was aware of her hands turning to fists, she was aware of standing from her chair, and she was aware of making for the door, intent, in that very moment, to find Voldemort and destroy him. Destroy him and TORTURE him, and then kill him. For all her life, for everything she had done, never had she been about sadism, about cruelity, but now, but concerning Voldemort...that was ALL she was about.

"Amanda!" Dumbledore's sharp voice called out from behind her. And she would not have stopped, if that had been all he said. If that had been it, alone and simple. But that was not all he said, that was not what he left it at, and that was not...so simple. "There's more."

And that was why Amanda stopped. Why she turned around, her entire being shaking with this need inside of her, with this rage and...with this pain, she realized as she lowered herself into her chair once more. Deep, swimming, horrible pain that, like her rage, was like nothing she had felt before.

Dumbledore stared at her for a long moment (and she stared right back at him through blurry vision), then he said, "On the night Voldemort tried to kill you, his curse rebounded. But he did not die that night. Instead he became...less than even a ghost. For eleven years, he stayed in exile. Powerless, with his former allies and servants imprisoned or reformed. For eleven years, the magical world knew peace. However, ten years ago, Voldemort acquired a magical item known as the Sorcerer's Stone, which allowed him to return to both a physical body and his former power again. Since then, we - myself, and members of an organization I founded known as the Order of the Phoenix - have fought against him and his forces, known as Death Eaters."

"Several years ago, Voldemort and his Death Eaters achieved total control over magical Britain, and, admittedly, since then the Order has been having increasingly less success in its efforts to liberate the magical world from Voldemort's rule." Dumbledore sighed and finished with, "And now, as of last September, it seems Voldemort has begun shifting his focus to the nonmagical community of Britain."

Nonmagical community. Those words pierced Amanda's heart like a bullet. RUE was the nonmagical community, and so was even Dudley and his family.

"Where is he?!" she demanded loudly.

"My dear, if we knew that, this war would have been over a long time ago." sighed Dumbledore. He gazed at her with his strange eyes for a moment. "I take it, then, that you have indeed found sufficient motivation to join the fight against Voldemort?"

'Damn right I have.' Amanda thought fiercely. Voldemort not ONLY threatened the life of Rue, but also the lives of hundreds of OTHER children. Who knew how many he had already killed, as he had tried to kill Amanda when SHE had been an infant? This monster, this child murderer, would meet his end at Amanda's hands, and only after many, many hours of torture, of agony, all inflicted upon him so that he could know and feel all that AMANDA had known and felt in her life, and all that he had caused the many children that were his victims to feel.

Amanda would force Voldemort to watch as those he loved and cared for the most were killed by her, as he had made her watch her mother die when Amanda had been an infant.

And then she would kill him.

Only that would satisfy the balance, would right the imbalance born of all these years Amanda had not stopped Voldemort from killing all those children, all these years she had not been PROTECTING THEM and SAVING THEM from him.

But...no, it was even more than THAT, she thought, as her mind went to the prophecy. She, Amanda, was more than that. All this time she had thought she had been serving the balance, but, according to the prophecy, she WAS the balance. She had been born and created by fate and destiny themselves as the other side of a coin, the other end of an equation, to mirror the side that was Voldemort.

Amanda WAS balance! Her sole reason for existing was TO BALANCE.

And Voldemort WAS imbalance, HIS sole purpose being to UNBALANCE. To kill children and cause children pain by murdering their parents in front of their very eyes...

Amanda was balance to Voldemort's imbalance, and she had to be the one to kill him, because she was THE ONLY ONE WHO COULD KILL HIM.

"Take me." Amanda said, getting to her feet. "Take me away with you. Now."

"While I admire your enthusiasm," Dumbledore said seriously, standing as well. "you will need training and experience before you can even have a hope of confronting, much less defeating, Lord Voldemort. I will take you to the headquarters of the Order, where you will get to know the place, and those who inhabit it, and then - I promise you it will be very soon - you will begin your training."

Amanda thought that she could not start soon enough. But she did not voice this as Dumbledore-

Took her ARM! Took her arm in HIS HAND!

And then it was not his hand holding her arm, it was another hand, another grip, bigger, harder, squeezing her frail little bones until they snapped-

Amanda's whole being lurched, and then she felt like she was being squeezed through a tube, and she could see and feel nothing, and she was no longer in the past, no longer THERE, but HERE, here and yet nowhere, and...

And then the world came back to her, and she was staggering into a polished wall in a wide, curved hallway lined with doors along the outer wall, and she suspected that the hallway went all the way around in a circle, which meant there was some big room in the center.

There WAS a pair of double doors set into the inner wall of the hallway, after all, so it made sense.

"What happened?" she demanded, rounding on Dumbledore with thoughts of just how she would hurt him for DARING to TOUCH HER, to GRAB HER LIKE THAT, like her uncle had always done, had always done and which had always preceeded some form of terrible pain.

"My apologies." Dumbledore said calmly, though also sincerely, as far as Amanda could tell. "I...admit I quite forgot...never mind. Ah, that was called Apparition, a magical means of moving instantaneously from one location to another."

"You'll teach me this?" she asked quickly, for having the ability to instantly move about the world - to go and visit Rue, or Dudley, or those famous landmarks and buildings she had seen in newspapers and glimpsed on television in her childhood at number four, and later at the hospital, that had so captured her wonder - would just be- be...incredible.

Dumbledore smiled. "Not me, no. But one of your other, shall we say, instructors, will, yes, be teaching you how to Apparate."

"Who?"

Dumbledore's smile widened, and he nodded to one of the doors along the corridor wall. "Why don't you come and meet her? I do believe that everyone is quite eager to meet you in return. In fact, you have something of a literal welcoming party waiting for you in the dining room - and just in time for dinner. Funny how these things tend to work out, isn't it?" he added, an amused twinkle in his eyes as he motioned her to the door.

Amanda approached the door with shock and wonder swirling about inside of her heart. Her head was swirling with thoughts, too. A PARTY? For HER? Would there be cake and ice cream? And presents? And...well, she supposed she did not have any friends, but...but this party of hers could at least be SIMILAR to all those parties she had watched Dudley have on his birthdays for all those many years, couldn't it? After all, HER birthday was...today! It was TODAY, she realized with a further jolt of shock.

Today was her twenty-second birthday!

She had never had a party on her birthday. She had never even tasted cake or ice cream before, but it always had looked so wonderfully delicious and she hoped she could have some of that too, finally!

Oh, Amanda hoped against hope that that would be so! Friends and ice cream and cake and balloons and streamers and those cute little pointed hats that she had always wondered if they could be used to stab somebody with...

Stepping through the door into the massive dining room chamber was like stepping into a dream, Amanda thought.

The ceiling was high, filled with floating candles of all different colors, and the ceiling itself was no ceiling, but a sky. An evening sky, splashed across with oranges and reds, and behind them the faint twinkling of many stars just becoming visible with the sun's downfall.

The dining table itself was an incredibly, almost IMPOSSIBLY long oval, with upwards of twenty, maybe even thirty, high-backed, cushioned dining room chairs all around it.

And yes, yes, Amanda saw, yes, as a grin came to her face, YES, there was a cake, chocolate and as impossibly large as the dining table, and there was a big banner hovering in mid-air with, "Happy Birthday Amanda" and, "Welcome to the WW/Order" below the birthday good wishes, the words of both lines shifting and changing colors like the candles and the flames OF the candles, casting light on the dining room, but not quite reaching the farthest edges of the chamber.

And all around the chamber, Amanda saw fluttering, glowing, multicolored butterflies! Or, at least, she THOUGHT they were butterflies. They looked not quite like the butterflies Amanda had always seen out her window back at number four or at the hospital.

And there were people, she saw them all. They were all there, all around the table, all looking at HER! So many people, so many...

Only a few came forward, a fact for which Amanda was grateful.

A man with thick, long, almost wild black hair and just as black eyes, and another man who was thin, wearing shabby clothing, and had light-brown hair, and a tall (or at least, taller than Amanda) woman with skinny limbs and long, bushy brown hair and chocolate colored eyes (GOD Amanda LOVED chocolate and this woman was so PRETTY!), and lastly, a man with sallow skin, greasy black hair, a big, hooked nose, and eyes as black as beetle shells.

They were all smiling at her. At AMANDA. Except the hook-nosed man, that is. He looked very, very...nervous. Afraid, almost. And certainly shocked about as much as Amanda was, though, she suspected, for different reasons than the reasons that SHE had for being shocked.

"Amanda." greeted the messy black-haired man first, his expression jovial and filled with laugh lines. "We've never met before, but I'm your godfather, Sirius Black. This here is Remus Lupin," Sirius gestured to the brown-haired man with a flourishing hand that, for some reason, made Amanda feel like giggling. "and this lovely and very much taken young lady is Hermione Granger," Another flourish, this time to the bushy-haired woman. "And THIS greasy tosser is Severus Snape, known behind his back as Snivellus." Sirius did not flourish his gesture to Snape, just gave an almost lazy flick of his pointer finger.

Amanda DID giggle - she couldn't help herself - on hearing "Snivellus".

Snivellus- Snape, that is, flushed and fidgeted and STARED at Amanda upon her giggling, and then he looked away. Then he seemed to not be able to KEEP looking away, and looked back at her again, a wobbly sort of smile on his lips that Amanda couldn't tell if it came from being nervous, embarrassed, or something else entirely.

"It's nice to meet you, godfather Sirius, Remus, H-Hermione," Amanda stammered the woman's name, felt a blush coming to her cheeks, remembered what her godfather had said about Hermione being taken already (how could he have even known Amanda was interested in other women when they had never even met before?), and hurriedly moved on to the last person she needed to greet. "and Sni- Severus."

"Nice to...meet you, as well." Snape replied, in almost a mutter, that odd, uncertain smile still appearing and disappearing on his face like a flickering candle.

"Don't mind old Snivelly's lack of manners." Sirius said loudly to Amanda, a grin on his face. "He always wanted to do your mum, so you see, you're really the next best thing in his eyes- Ow!" Sirius exclaimed, as Lupin cut him off by elbowing him, hard, in the ribs.

Amanda's giggling intensified, and she clapped her hands to her mouth, fighting not to double over in the throes of it all.

"Were it not Amanda's birthday, I'd curse you so terribly you'd be feeling it clear into next week, Black." Snape snapped at Sirius. "So consider yourself very, very lucky, you ill-mannered, immature bastard."

"You know, he SAID 'Amanda', but all I HEARD was 'Lily.'" Sirius quipped, earning him another elbow from Lupin.

"I'm sure Snape is perfectly aware of who Amanda is." Lupin said, in a firm, but reasonable tone of voice. "As are we all." he added, even more firmly, and Amanda thought there was some hidding meaning there, some conversation she had missed.

"Though, you have to admit, she's literally a dead ringer for Lily." said Sirius seriously, quietly. "Merlin, she really, really is...you could be twins, honestly. Lily was just a couple solid months younger than you when she-"

"When she was murdered by Voldemort." Amanda finished, her voice quivering with the sudden surge of all-powerful, ungodly rage she felt again at the very thought of that man, that monster, her giggle fit having gone away in the blink of an eye.

"Yes. That." Snape spoke slowly, enunciating those two words to draw them out for several seconds, his expression pained and haunted.

"Well," Dumbledore cut in a little too loudly from Amanda's side. She had forgotten he was even there, honestly. "this is your party, my dear. I suggest you enjoy it. Mingle, as they say."

Her PARTY! HER party! This was HERS, this was for HER, all of it, all of these people! Would the shock, would the giddiness, would the delight, NEVER wear off?

Amanda was certain it would, in fact, NEVER leave her.

Mingle...mingle...mingle...She repeated the word over and over again in her mind, each time feeling more and more like giggling again. It was just a...a FUNNY word. A...SILLY word, really. But, more seriously: MINGLE? Yes, she thought, she could do that.

She could do that, here, now...at HER PARTY!

And she would start with the people in front of her.

"Do you like chocolate?" she asked Snape, smiling at him from ear to ear.

"Not rea- yes." Snape changed his answer in mid-answer. He looked confused, then (possibly at himself), and he flushed again and gave another of his glances away from her. Then he glared at Sirius, when the latter opened his mouth to make some comment or other that probably wouldn't have been very nice.

"Good." Amanda said firmly, her green eyes sliding to her giant, chocolate cake. "Because I LOVE chocolate. I've never had a CAKE before, but I've had CHOCOLATE before, so...really, how different can chocolate CAKE be from plain CHOCOLATE?"

Hermione laughed, and Amanda did a Snape; she blushed and looked away from the object of her desire.

"Hopefully, it won't taste too different for you." said Lupin, an oddly forced smile on his face.

Amanda wondered why that was, but she didn't feel like asking him about it right now. Then again, this was her party, she was supposed to MINGLE (a lone giggle escaped her lips like a burp at the thought of that word again), and so wouldn't asking Lupin about that reaction of his be considered mingling?

"Why do you look like that at me?" she asked of Lupin, causing him to look surprised, then pained, then just sad and uncomfortable. They all looked that way now, Amanda noticed.

"Well...you've never...had a cake before." Lupin said haltingly. "That's...I mean..."

"It's...sad." Hermione said quietly. "None of us knew a thing about you up until an hour or so ago. Dumbledore only told us about you, about where you'd been all these years - in the hospital and all - just...an hour ago."

"Even him telling us THAT much seemed to take a hell of a lot out of the old bastard." Sirius said darkly. "He wouldn't tell us about how you even ended up in the hospital, or about your past, your life before then, or...or anything."

"But now that you're here, you can tell us yourself - if you want to, that is." Lupin added in an almost gentle voice.

Amanda was silent, giving the matter some serious thought. If she told them, these friends of her parents, her godfather, these people who could be her friends, who cared about her, of her past with the Dursleys, surely they would all get angry over it, and...and Amanda didn't WANT angry people at her party, her FIRST party ever, because that would RUIN the party.

And besides that, Amanda thought she had really had enough of pain and anger for one day.

"No." she stated, and then she strode past her greeters towards the dining table, so as to inspect the giant, eye-dazzling, chocolate cake in much more detail.

Behind her back, Amanda heard Sirius, her GODFATHER, say, "Great going, Moony. You went and scared her off. We have no idea what she's even been through, just that whatever it was, it was bad enough to land her in a hospital for over a decade. Next time we approach her, could you try a little harder to NOT make her remember whatever the hell it is that she's got in her past?"

"Since when did you become the sensitive one?" Amanda heard Lupin reply.

"Since I learned my goddaughter grew up in a nuthouse, that she's probably nuts, herself, and that she seems to have, just on first observation in the last five minutes or so, the mentality of a twelve-year-old rather than a twenty-two-year-old - and probably even less, if you want to factor in whatever mental disorders she has." said Sirius, so quietly Amanda almost didn't hear him.

If Lupin, Snape, Hermione, or even Dumbledore made any response to her godfather's words, Amanda didn't hear them, because she had now reached her enormous cake!

It was even bigger and prettier than it had seemed from a distance. It was like a sand castle or something (not that Amanda had ever built a sand castle before). It had green icing that said pretty much the same thing as the banner floating over her head: Happy Birthday, Amanda!

"Like it?" said a voice nearly in Amanda's ear.

Her heart pounding, Amanda spun around, and was met with the sight of two, red-headed twin men who looked only a year or two older than she was.

"I've never seen a cake like this before." Amanda admitted, feeling herself blush, and not knowing just WHY she was doing it. She hadn't blushed this much in her entire LIFE! In fact, not counting this party, she couldn't even REMEMBER the last time she had blushed - if she ever even had.

"I wouldn't imagine so." said the twin on the left, looking both serious and amused. "Dumbledore practically threatened to snap our wands if we did anything to your cake, courtesy of Fred and George Weasley - that's us, I'm Fred, he's George, by the way - and our grand enterprise, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, even if it HAS been back to mail order services since we were run out of our shop by the Death Eaters a couple years back...but I wasn't talking about the cake." Fred finished. He waved a theatrical hand at the dining hall in its entirety. "We, George and I, did all this."

"And we would've done a whole lot more, too, only, like with the cake, Dumbledore warned us not to do anything too flashy for your first magical experience." added George, grinning.

"You did all of this for me in an hour?" Amanda demanded, amazed.

"Mhm." said Fred absently, while examining his fingernails.

"Imagine what we could have done if Dumbledore had given us two." George put in, his grin widening, and a mysterious glint coming to his eyes.

"Trust me, Amanda, you really don't want to do that." said a new, but familiar voice. It was Hermione Granger, come over to talk to Amanda again, and this time she had another woman on her arm. A slender, dark-skinned, curvy woman who Amanda thought looked foreign. Chinese or Japanese or something like that (her only exposure to this sort of thing, to different nationalities, was through television, so she really just wasn't sure).

"Hello." said the foreign woman, smiling at Amanda almost radiantly. "I'm Padma, Padma Patil."

"Hello. I'm Amanda, Amanda Potter." Amanda mimicked, staring hard at Hermione and Padma's joined arms. Suddenly the party didn't really seem so great of a thing to Amanda. She felt a little...cold.

"I'm Hermione Granger." said Hermione, as if automatically. She blushed when both Amanda and Padma stared at her. "But you both already knew that! Ahem, Amanda, this is Padma, my wife. It'll be our five year anniversary in a couple of weeks."

Ah. This...THIS, Amanda knew about for CERTAIN from television. "Are you going anywhere for it?"

Hermione looked surprised at Amanda's knowledge, which just sent a flash of irritation through the latter woman, but she quickly recovered. "Yes, yes, in fact, we were thinking about Paris. I've been there a few times, but Padma hasn't been at all, and she's really been wanting to."

Inexplicably finding herself wanting to escape this conversation, Amanda cast around for Fred and George, the ones who actually made her feel like laughing and smiling, but they seemed to have disappeared into thin air (perhaps they had used the power of Apparition, she thought to herself). If they had, she thought she understood. She would have endured being squeezed into a tube of nothingness just to get away from Hermione and Padma at that moment.

Amanda DID escape from the pair - by turning right back around and going back over to the huddled grouping of Sirius, Lupin, Snape, and Dumbledore, who were now joined by a tall, broad-shouldered black man with a very serious looking face. As she approached them, she resigned herself to the fact that she would have to get used to people disappearing and reappearing all over the place now.

Maybe she could keep her head on a constant swivel, she thought. But no, that would just hurt her neck...

"Welcome back to the only group in this place worth talking with." Sirius said by way of greeting, his eyes sparkling at her almost like Dumbledore's, his handsome face shining with only joy. "Not including Snivellus here." he added, throwing a grin Snape's way.

Snape just scowled, and thrust his hands into his robe pockets. He was all anxious again, and Amanda knew it was because of her. That knowledge brought a smile to her face.

"Where are we?" Amanda questioned, because she wanted to know, and because, after all, she had fulfilled her end of the trade with Dumbledore, so now she was allowed to ask any questions she wanted - of anyone. At least, that was what she decreed. After all, she no longer SERVED the balance; she WAS the balance, and so she would decide what constituted balance, and when it would be achieved.

"A very old, very large manor that belonged to some old wizard who's dead now." Sirius answered easily. "You probably won't believe it, but we're all the way up in the mountains, and probably too many miles to count away from London."

"Did you kill him?" Amanda asked, feeling still more curious. Everyone in the group (except Dumbledore) looked at her in surprise, and even shock.

"Err, no." Sirius said slowly, looking...troubled. "Alexander Toschi was his name, and he was dead long before we made this place headquarters. New headquarters, that is - we lost our old one a few months back. Lost a lot of friends that night, too. Hannah Abbott, Dean Thomas, Ronald Weasley..."

"With you here now, everyone seems to think they won't be losing any more friends. Your emergence has given them hope; I have not seen so many of them smiling like this in many months now." said the tall black man to Amanda, his voice deep and smooth. He stuck out his hand, and Amanda recoiled. The man eyed her for a long moment, then lowered his hand. "My apologies, I am Kingsley Shacklebolt, former head of the Aurors. I say former because, since the magical world fell under Lord Voldemort's control, he has had no need for the Auror office. His Death Eaters suffice for him in the task of policing his world."

Amanda didn't reply to that. She wouldn't have known where to start, anyway.

"Who will be my instructors?" she fired off, looking to Sirius. "Dumbledore said I'm going to have to learn how to use magic to fight before I can join the war."

"Well..." Sirius ran a hand through his tangled mess of hair, and threw a small glare at Snape. "Snivellus here will be in charge of teaching you offensive and defensive magic, Hermione will teach you the combat applications of charms and transfiguration magic, and our own Lupin here will be teaching you how to combat the dark creatures Voldemort has under his command, such as Giants, Dementors, and Inferi. And, last but not least, you'll be learning Apparition and sensory magics from Cedric Diggory, one of our best and brightest." As Sirius finished, he nodded across the dining room at an extremely handsome young man with fair skin, blue eyes, and brown hair, who was sitting at the table on the far side of the room, and talking animatedly to a child who was seated beside him; a girl, who looked, to Amanda, to be around twelve or so, with long brown braids and matching brown eyes.

"Who's he talking to?" Amanda asked. She could not take her eyes off the girl, and it was because, seeing this child so near the age of her OWN child, she was reminded of Rue, and reminded that she needed to go and see her as soon as she possibly could (which, Amanda realized, would have to be AFTER she learned Apparition, because if she truly was in the mountains, and many miles from London, there was no way she could leave this place and make it to Rue's home in any small amount of time, and so Amanda resolved to master Apparition, and master it faster than any witch ever had).

"That's Kendra. She's a war orphan." Sirius explained, his expression turning dark (again - and Amanda didn't like it). "A couple months back, the Death Eaters took her right out of Hogwarts and threw her into battle against us. They used the threat of killing her mother to ensure her...cooperation...but we learned later that they'd killed the woman before even snatching Kendra up. It was Cedric who took her away from that battle, and kept her safe and hidden from the Death Eaters until they could make their way here. Since then, Cedric's sort of become her unofficial guardian, though I think Kendra sees him as even more than that; more like a father figure, or maybe even a father - plain. She never had one before, at any rate; it had only ever been her and her mother." Sirius added, shrugging.

Amanda nodded, and then found herself crossing the dining room and heading for Cedric and Kendra. Or rather, just Kendra, because Amanda was not being drawn over to them by some desire to make conversation, but by her aching, motherly longing for her own daughter.

Perhaps, Amanda thought, Kendra could sate it.

When Amanda reached the pair, Cedric rose to greet her, extending a hand out to her like Kingsley had done. And, just like with Kingsley, Amanda shrunk back from that reaching hand as if it were someone ELSE'S hand.

"Amanda, it's good to finally meet you." Cedric began in earnest, letting his hand drop - and Amanda's behavior go unquestioned along with it. "It's good to have you here with us. You know about the prophecy? About who you are and what you have to do?" he added, before Amanda could even think of a response to make, a grin coming over his face.

"I know all about it." Amanda settled for finally saying, not sure what to feel at the moment. Though, surely she should feel flattered, if anything?

"Wow." Cedric let out a breath. "So, this is really it. This is...merlin, sorry, but- wow. Very exciting times. And just when we'd all honestly gotten about ready to give up hope entirely, and let Voldemort just have whatever the hell he wants to have in this world."

Yes, being flattered would be just fine, Amanda decided, a smile growing on her lips.

"So you're here to save the world." Kendra said suddenly, surprising both Cedric and Amanda. Her eyes were filled with such shining awe and wonder that Amanda felt a bursting of pure emotion in her heart in response.

There were many things Amanda could have said to the girl, right then and right there, things that contained conviction, confidence, assurance, and all manner of certainties. However, in the end, Amanda decided on giving Kendra the truth as she now knew it, in light of a prophecy that had never foretold whether or not she would be the one to emerge triumphant from the war she was fated to wage against her opposite.

Kneeling before the girl to look her in the eyes, Amanda said...

"I hope so."


	4. Rue The Day

"Do you have any twos?"

Amanda, laying on her stomach, supporting her upper body with her arms, and repeatedly kicking herself in the butt with her own feet while trying her best not to giggle, peered at her godfather over the cards she held out in front of her. "No..." she said slowly, a wide grin stealing over her face; all her cards were twos.

Sirius took one look at her, then said, with the utmost combination of exasperation and amusement, "Okay, Amanda, one, you're supposed to say 'Go Fish', remember? And two, somehow, for some strange, ungodly reason, I don't believe you."

"Go Fish!" Amanda cried, scrambling to get into a sitting position, holding her cards to her chest protectively.

"Hand over your twos." Sirius said simply, laughing a laugh that sounded a lot like the bark of his animagus form.

"I don't have any twos!" Amanda insisted, shaking her head and scooting away from Sirius on the fine and expensive carpet-covered floor of her room, which had once been simply one guest room among many in Toschi Manor - a manor that was more along the size of a castle, and a manor that, even now, after having been there a week, she still became lost in all too often. There were too many wings and staircases and winding corridors for her to keep track of, and the fact that it all looked exactly the same in its moon blue color scheme certainly didn't make finding her way around any easier.

"Don't make me MAKE YOU give them to me." warned Sirius, setting his own cards down and fixing her with a look that was...still more playful than serious. "You know I'll do it."

"Maybe I want you to do it." Amanda replied, grinning even more. "You're really cute as a dog!"

"Well, I'm glad to see that that particular opinion of yours hasn't faded after all these years." Sirius said, a bit more seriously now. "You found Padfoot to be extraordinarly lovable as a baby. Too lovable, really; you used to pull my fur and drool on me." he added with a shudder, which had Amanda literally rolling on the floor in the throes of laughter. Sirius took the opportunity to pluck her cards from her hands (though, he made sure not to make any skin contact between his hand and hers, because he had, by now, learned the lesson not to touch her - as had everyone in the Order, whether directly or indirectly) and then he just sat back patiently to watch her until she regained control over herself (which took her quite a while; almost five minutes).

"Rematch!" Amanda declared, when she had calmed enough to do so, setting about gathering up all the cards in the deck.

"But we just HAD a rematch." Sirius protested.

"Rematch, rematch, rematch!" Amanda heedlessly chanted, ripping Sirius's cards - and the cards he had stolen from her - out of his hands to add to the deck she had reconstructed. However, just as they were about to start playing again, there was a sharp knock on her door.

"Come in!" Amanda called to her visitor. It was Severus Snape, looking just as anxious and self-concious as he always had seemed to be whenever he had been forced to be in Amanda's presence in the past week. Also, as he had been doing for the past week whenever he had to be around her, he maintained a steady gaze in any and all directions BESIDES a direction that would have meant setting his eyes on HER.

"Loath as I am to...disrupt this touching scene," Snape began, sounding as if he were choking in his attempts to maintain his usual mannerisms. "Amanda, you're to go- err, that is, you are WANTED in the ballroom by Mrs. Granger so that you can start your training. So, if you could...go...that would be...best for all of us..." Snape trailed off into incoherent mumbling, and he suddenly took a keen interest in his own, black boots.

"Oh, yeah, I'm sure you just couldn't STAND having an ironclad excuse to come and have a leer at my goddaughter." Sirius spoke up with heavy sarcasm. "It must be TORTURE for your poor, innocent little soul just to be in the same room as her."

"Ballroom. Try not to keep Mrs. Granger waiting."  
Snape said shortly to Amanda, ignoring Black entirely, before turning on his heel very precisely and leaving the room at a fast walk. He really needn't have said that last part to her; Amanda was on her feet nearly half a second after he left the room,  
following him out.

"Take me to the ballroom." she said, falling into step beside Snape. "I'll get lost if I try to find it on my own." she added, in a quiet, hesitant voice, at his very subdued glare (though a glare nonetheless). Snape's glare vanished on hearing her elaboration, however, and he gave her a nod.

"Very well." he said simply, and slowed his pace.

Amanda smiled to herself as they walked along the corridors. This past week had been full of surprises, perhaps the most of which being that she had discovered the ability to express herself, whether it be in anger, sadness, confusion, worry, or even affection, and not suffer any damages for her troubles. Yes, these people here, this Order, these...friends, maybe, they were not like her aunt and uncle, and nor were they like the people who had been keeping her prisoner in the hospital all those years. She would not receive a hand, a fist, a foot, a pan, or...worse things, for asking questions, for explaining herself, and for voicing what she wanted or even needed to voice at times.

And that was...nice.

It was nice, Amanda realized, as the full impact of it struck her then, to finally be free.

* * *

Freedom, Cho Chang was beginning to realize, as she appeared out of thin air in front of a very strange home on a hilltop, was not all she had thought that it would be.

It was true that she could go anywhere she wanted, go into any store and take whatever she wanted (mainly expensive outfits), and just DO whatever she wanted (anything from killing someone for looking at her funny, to grabbing any random woman off the street and forcing her to be, for lack of any nicer words, her sex slave), all because of the tattoo on her arm, but none of that was...what Cho really wanted.

She'd grown to feel more and more empty lately, more and more...lifeless, emotionless. These things she could do now, these places she could go now, it was all flickering, fleeting pleasures, there for an instant and gone the next.

Cho felt no...no SUBSTANCE to her life now, and she had to admit that, more and more, she was growing to miss her childhood, her time at Hogwarts, and even her time in the Order.

At least back then she had had real, intense...just REAL. She had felt, she had loved, she had lost, and though she had not been a fan of her chances of mortality (the reason she had left the Order to begin with), she thought now that she would have taken those chances again if it meant getting all of that intensity and emotion back.

She didn't even have friends now. She had left them all behind, destroyed anything they had once had, in switching sides. Ginny was not a woman of substance, a woman of depth. All she wanted in this world was sex, murder, and the total destruction of her family (she had the first two in spades, and was making slow progress towards that last one).

Draco Malfoy, Cho couldn't stand (he just got on her nerves for some reason; probably his arrogance), and he wasn't the kind of person she would have hung out with, anyway. As for Pansy Parkinson, she was made along the same lines as Ginny - only interested in sex, and killing a few people each day before the sun went down.

Katie Bell was definitely a woman of substance, and they had shared a shopping trip or two, but Katie was mainly interested in Quidditch, and Cho had lost all passion for that too many years ago.

Cho couldn't even remember HOW or WHY that passion had faded, now, something that positively alarmed her.

Not even battle, not even killing or torturing, had its thrill anymore. Three months ago, during the attack on Grimmauld Place, all Cho had wanted of it was for it to be over. To that end, when everyone had fled the building, taking the battle out onto the streets, Cho had opted to just up and leave; no hanging around to snipe off Order members, no helping her fellow Death Eaters.

Just leave, just go.

Although, afterwards, she HAD felt small little burstings of guilt and remorse for her, dare she even think it, cowardice, hence why she had gone to see Ginny in the hospital, and why Cho had ATTEMPTED to spend more time with the woman in these past few months since.

But, again, Ginny was not the type of woman one just "hung out with". Especially if your name was Cho Chang.

Cho was tired. So, so tired, she realized, sitting down on the steps of Luna Lovegood's vacant house, and staring down into her lap.

What was this freedom, if it took every good thing from her? Every emotion, every passion, every pleasure, every longtime friend she had had...even her girlfriend.

And what could Cho do to get all of that back?

Well, she thought, an idea suddenly popping into her head. She had already switched sides once...so who was to say she couldn't do it again?

She couldn't go back to the Order, she wasn't an idiot. She knew they would never accept her, even if they HAD accepted Peter Pettigrew (and then, only because he had proven himself to them beyond a doubt when he had attacked Voldemort himself in a battle gone wrong). But what if she didn't go to any preexisting sides?

What if...what if she made her OWN side? What if she had her very own, new friends with her? Her own base? Her own goals and rules?

Would that be enough to bring emotion, excitement, and substance back into Cho and into her life?

As she felt a sudden, powerful rush of energy, and long-forgotten feelings of anticipation, exhilaration, and elation, she thought that, yes, it would.

"All hail Cho." she smiled to herself, feeling lighter than she had in months.

* * *

"Where's Padma?" Amanda asked, as soon as she had set a foot into the ballroom and laid eyes on Hermione, who was standing amidst many different tables and chairs (not all of them standing upright).

"She's not going to have any part in your training." Hermione said at once, though looking puzzled at Amanda's question even as she answered it.

'Good.' thought Amanda, feeling very bouncy inside, and finding herself unable to repress a smile. "What do we do first?" she asked happily, drawing her phoenix feather wand (given to her by Dumbledore as a birthday present the day of her arrival) from her skirt's waistband.

Hermione smiled back, then cleared her throat. "Well, erm, I thought we could start you off with a simple summoning charm, just to get a general idea about how much of a hang on spellwork you'll likely have - so we'll know what to expect from future sessions - and then I thought, depending on how good you do with the summoning charm, we could move on to- Amanda, what are you doing?!"

"Kissing you." Amanda said coyly, unphased by Hermione's exclamation - and subsequent look of shock and step back - at the kiss she had darted forward to place on the bushy-haired, chocolate-eyed woman's cheek. Then, to further press the point of the kiss - and to exercise her newfound freedom of expression - she added, "I love chocolate."

Hermione stared at her in equal parts outrage, embarrassment, and patience and understanding, while rubbing the spot on her cheek where Amanda had kissed her. "I'm flattered, erm, nothing better than being on par with chocolate in someone's eyes, but you know very well that I'm married, so- please...never do that again, all right?"

"But...but I love you..." Amanda whispered, looking down at her feet, as tears started flowing down her face, unexpectedly and earnestly, and as a great, heavy lump formed in her throat to block her air. She felt so horrible it wasn't even funny. How could she have done that and gotten nothing? How could she have shown her love and...gotten nothing in return? Nothing but a rejection, but a...a SCOLDING, like her aunt or uncle would have done to her?

She had thought she was free here, safe here, allowed to think and do and say and...but no, that was obviously wrong, Amanda realized now, deep in her confusion and sadness. She couldn't love here, she couldn't feel or say here, not without punishment, not without rebukes, not without-

"Amanda, look at me." Amanda did, and Hermione went on, in a gentle voice, "I know you think that you love me, but you- you don't, okay? You don't love me, and you CAN'T love me. At least not now. Not while I'm with Padma, which isn't going to change any time soon."

"Go and be with Padma, then." Amanda said coldly, swiping at her tears with a shaking hand. Hermione recoiled at her tone, looking suddenly quite terrified. "I'll be in the kitchen if you need me for anything besides being your doll you think you can just hurt any time you want!" With that, Amanda turned and started for the ballroom's double doors.

"Amanda, wait!" Hermione cried, but Amanda was already out the doors and moving down the hall with quick, snapping steps.

Amanda would pay Hermione back for that hurt, for that rejection, later, she thought to herself, anger coursing through her. Just as she had payed back her aunt and uncle for all those years of hurt and rejection.

Balance would be achieved.

Though, Amanda had rather been hoping that any balancing acts she committed out here in the free world would NOT be against these people who she liked and loved. But balance was balance, and it had to be kept: no matter who it involved.

Hermione had hurt Amanda, and so she would be hurt in return.

That was the way of things. That was Amanda's DUTY as the balance itself, even if, as the balance itself, she now had a great deal of wiggle room when it came to the details of how and when, compared to when she had thought herself to be its servant. There was, however, no wiggle room for just NOT acting to restore balance. That was entirely out of the question, and not even a thought in Amanda's mind.

Amanda would have to be careful, though, not to hurt Hermione in such a way that would cause her to refuse to train her, because THAT would throw off - perhaps even PREVENT - the larger balance that was Amanda and Voldemort, and the war between them. Yes, this would have to be done...differently than she would have usually done, just as with that security guard who had leered at her butt, and when she had had to find an alternative method of achieving balance in that matter because of the more important, larger balance of the time between her cousin and herself that she could not have jeopardized.

Reaching the impossibly spacious kitchen that looked like the back of a restaurant, Amanda took a chocolate pudding from the fridge, and began to think out just those particulars in the matter of the balance between herself and Hermione Granger.

No broken bones, no blood, and certainly no killing the woman - because THAT would put as swift an end to Amanda's training, and create far too great an imbalance when it came to her and Voldemort, as nothing else would (not to mention that Amanda did not WANT to kill Hermione; she was certain she could get her love, in time).

As with the security guard, it would need to be something that came from Amanda's brain, from her smarts, rather than from her jabbing fingers and raging fists.

Something small but decisive, something...something to do with tonight's dinner, Amanda decided, gazing into the depths of her delicious pudding in even deeper thought.

After just a moment, it came to her. One, single, simple fact, one kernel of knowledge that would allow Amanda to restore balance.

Hermione loved buttered bread rolls, and she had never failed, in all the dinners Amanda had had with her this past week, to take two for herself.

* * *

"You want to start your Apparition training...now?" said Cedric Diggory, peering at Amanda Potter critically, as well as in confusion (though, to be fair, she elicited that reaction in EVERYONE). "What happened to charms and transfiguration being first? You should be in it right now, as a matter of fact. What's going on?"

Amanda's response, in Cedric's opinion, was not at all helpful in explaining this abrupt change in the schedule he and the others in charge of her training had come up with. She simply stood there, looking at him with a complete lack of expression on her face, like a human statue.

"Is it...something to do with Hermione?" Cedric pressed on, still hoping to get some kind of answer out of the red-haired woman. Well, he didn't get an ANSWER with his words, but he DID get a REACTION.

Amanda suddenly was full of life. Furious and upset life. Her eyes narrowed and shimmered, her hands became fists, and her lips trembled. She whirled on the spot and roundhouse kicked the full-length mirror in Cedric's room so hard it shattered, leaving hundreds of pieces of glass scattered across the carpet.

"All right then, time for your Apparition training." Cedric said hastily. "If you'll follow me outside; we'll need to be beyond the boundaries of the anti-apparition ward to do anything..."

As he led Amanda from the room (pausing to repair the mirror with a flick of his wand on the way out) he made a mental note not to mention Hermione's name around her again, as well as to find out from Hermione herself just what had gone wrong between the two women. If Amanda was unwilling to be trained by Hermione, or if Hermione was unwilling to train Amanda...well, the problem would be a very obvious, very serious one.

"Okay." said Cedric, stopping and turning to face Amanda, once they were outside - and a great distance away from - Toschi Manor. The chilly mountain air breezed around them, fluttering and shuffling snow in long streaks and swirls. "You ready?"

"Ready." Amanda nodded seriously, seemingly unaffected by the cold, despite that she was clad in a very thin, small T-shirt, and a similarly sheer, cotton skirt (the skirt, Cedric observed completely objectively, was highly transparent, like tissue paper).

"All right." Cedric returned her nod. "Apparition requires only two things: magic, and concentration. You need to have a great deal of focus to make it work properly. If not, you'll leave body parts behind when you depart for your destination, which is known as Splinching."

"Okay." said Amanda, nodding again.

"Right...guess I'll show you first, then we'll see if you can't manage it. I don't expect you to get it on your first try." Cedric added, in hopes of preventing her from throwing a...well, a TEMPER TANTRUM when nothing happened whatsoever on her first try (and the woman who was honestly more of a girl, a child, had thrown some SPECTACULAR ones in the past week - up to and including shattering Cedric's mirror with a flawless roundhouse kick - for her various and incomprehensible reasons). He pointed to a jagged boulder not ten feet away. "Watch that spot." he told Amanda. Then, without any further ado, Cedric turned on the spot and Apparated over to his chosen destination.

"Now, really, don't get upset when you don't get it right away." Cedric reiterated to Amanda as he walked back to her. "I've never heard of anyone doing even a Splinched Apparation on their first attempt. Now, all you have to do is focus on your destination. Picture it in your mind, if you've been there before, or else concentrate on the address, if you haven't. Focus on moving from here, to there. On slipping out of this space and into another, to reappear elsewhere."

Amanda was silent, taking in his every word. She was all business, it seemed, and Cedric was glad of it. Her eyebrows were narrowed, her face was screwed up in intense concentration, and pure determination shone in her emerald eyes...

'Oh, merlin.' Cedric resisted the urge to take a few steps back at this sight; despite his repeated warnings, Amanda was going to try and Apparate on first attempt anyway, he could see that. And when she failed...that temper tantrum was going to rear its head. And when THAT happened, Cedric didn't want to be anywhere near the woman when she started-

Cedric let out an audible, actual gasp as, with a resounding crack, Amanda spun around, and disappeared into thin air.

After a heartbeat of total silence, Cedric frantically began scanning his surroundings, but there was no sign of the woman, no loud noise that would signify her reappearance.

As Cedric wondered, in his shock, amazement, and panic, whether he should wait there for her to reappear, or go back into Toschi Manor and report to the whole Order that their greatest hope had just left them all to rot without hesitation, without even a second thought, a more important question came bubbling up in his mind.

That question was: where in the world did she go?

* * *

If Amanda Potter could have opened her mouth during the process of Apparition, she would have been yelling out a very joyous and gleeful, "Weeeeeeeeee!"

Admittedly, she had had too much going on for her when Dumbledore had taken her out of the hospital to actually take note of the experience itself at the time. But now, this time, with just her and herself along for the ride, she found the sensation of going through a toothpaste tube, that pressure and sense of SLIDING to be incredible - and incredibly fun.

But, she reminded herself as she reappeared at her destination, stumbling in the bright green grass and tripping over a lawn mower, she had not Apparated - had not wanted to LEARN to Apparate ever since learning about the power a week ago - for fun.

No, she had wanted to Apparate, and just HAD, now, finally, so that she could, at last, visit her daughter, her Rue, who had been stolen from Amanda practically the moment she had been born on a scorchingly hot August day precisely eleven years ago...to the day.

It was fitting, Amanda thought, getting to her feet and smiling at the very ordinary, suburban London home before her, that she should at last come to see - and take - her child on the very day Rue had been born: August the eighth.

With that realization came overpowering joy, for Amanda then realized that IT WAS HER DAUGHTER'S BIRTHDAY. That joy was quickly replaced by guilt and shame twice as powerful as that first emotion, however, because she hadn't gotten her Rue any birthday presents! Now Amanda actually regretted the Order having come to collect her when it had, because, had she been able to stay in the hospital, she could have further questioned Sapphire about Rue. Then Amanda felt even MORE guilt at the thought of Sapphire, out there in the country, alone, wondering why Amanda had just left her out of nowhere...

Well, Amanda would find Sapphire again someday, and explain to her why she had had to leave, and what she had had to do. Yes, someday, she would make things right with Sapphire.

But for right now, Amanda had to make things right with her daughter.

"Excuse me, are you looking for someone?"

Amanda's head snapped to the right, and her eyes fell on a woman several years older than Amanda herself who had come out the front door. She was a pretty woman, Amanda saw. Tall, slender, and tan, with long, curly brown hair and olive green eyes - which were looking at Amanda with a shrewdness that the red-haired woman couldn't help but find attractive, too, in its own way.

"I've just found someone." Amanda responded, stepping off the lawn and onto the path to the front door. "My daughter, Rue."

"No, I think you have the wrong house." the brown-haired woman said slowly, shaking her head. "No one by that name lives here, sorry."

Amanda walked up the path and came to a halt directly in front of the woman. She cast an admiring look up and down the woman's figure, then shook her head to clear it of THOSE feelings. THOSE FEELINGS were NOT why she was here, no matter that this woman had, admittedly, cared for Rue most wonderfully for all these years, according to Sapphire's report of a week ago in regards to Rue's life.

"Rue." Amanda said softly. "She turns eleven today. August eight. She has fair skin, blond hair, and my green eyes."

The woman uttered a soft, "Oh..." as she stared - REALLY stared - into Amanda's eyes. Her olive eyes widened, and Amanda saw the realization come to her face. "You're..."

"Rue's mother, yes." Amanda nodded.

"I...see." the woman drew out the words, looking suddenly uncomfortable. "Her name...it's not...it's not Rue." she went on, seeming to struggle to get out the words. "It's Emily."

"It's Rue." Amanda corrected patiently, instantly. She wouldn't hold it against this woman, knowing Amanda's Rue by a different name, but she WOULD expect the woman to get used to knowing Amanda's daughter by her real name, with time.

The woman's olive eyes slid up and down the street before returning to Amanda. "Let's talk inside." she said finally.

"Where's Rue?" Amanda asked, following the woman into the house.

"Out." the woman said shortly, taking Amanda into the sitting room and settling herself down on a sofa. "Emily - Rue, as you call her - is at the zoo with some friends, along with my husband, Todd."

Amanda lowered herself into an armchair, not taking her eyes off the woman in front of her. She found herself, as on the day when, a week ago, she had come face to face with her cousin, sitting forward in her seat - nearly off the edge of it, really - with her hands in her lap. Though, a difference between this meeting and that one was that this time, Amanda's hands were not clenched into fists, but were merely resting on her bare knees.

"Rue likes animals." Amanda stated. If the woman noticed that it wasn't a question, she didn't let on.

"Very much." the woman agreed. For a long time, the two women simply stared at each other. Then the brown-haired woman blanched, and looked down on her own, quivering hands. "Listen, miss-"

"Amanda." supplied Amanda promptly. "Who are you?"

The woman looked up very quickly, her expression something very close to fear. "Call me Kimberly. Listen, Amanda...Emily is-"

"Coming with me." interrupted Amanda, smiling at Kimberly. "I've been away from her for too long."

"We'll...talk about that later." Kimberly spoke, looking at Amanda in mild disbelief, and now even some irritation. "For right now, I think we should-"

"Do you know that I only saw her, held her in my arms, for less than five minutes?" Amanda, again, interrupted, her voice shaking with her rapidly rising anger. "She was born in a broom cupboard under a staircase, my BEDROOM for the first eleven years of my life, and then she was taken from my arms and that was the last I saw of her! I can't even remember what she looked like!" she added, slamming her fist down on her thigh. "But I know what she looks like now, and she's MY daughter, MY Rue, and she's coming with me."

"Look - Amanda, was it? I'm sorry for whatever you went through, for whatever circumstances there were to Emily's birth, but I don't care who you are to her, you can't just show up here out of nowhere - and on her birthday, no less - with plans of taking her." Kimberly was leaning forward now, too, and her voice was loud and firm. Her eyes were hard, cutting into Amanda like no eyes she had seen before. "If you want to see her, if you want to be in her life, you come here and you spend time with her HERE, but you aren't taking her anywhere."

"Please, don't make me kill you." Amanda whispered, shaking now for a very different reason than anger. This woman, this Kimberly, this adopted mother of her Rue, as near close to having Amanda herself in her life as Rue could get, was threatening the balance. In her refusal to even consider letting Rue go and be with Amanda, Kimberly was...THWARTING the balance. If this continued, if Amanda did not get Rue soon...an imbalance would be created, and that, Amanda could not have. But the thought of having to kill this woman...Amanda had never felt so much regret in her life, and certainly not at the prospect of setting the balance.

"Excuse me?" Kimberly said, as if she couldn't believe what she had heard.

"Please don't make me kill you." Amanda repeated, in not at all a whisper, locking eyes with Kimberly as she rose from the armchair. "Rue is mine, she's coming with me, and you're not going to stand in the way of that."

There was a silence, a silence in which a look of dawning comprehension came over Kimberly's face, as she realized that yes, Amanda was serious, and then she, too, stood. Amanda saw the woman's eyes dart left and right, then home in on the phone that was resting on the piano.

"Don't try it." Amanda choked, her eyes starting to sting with tears now. "Don't run, don't call the police. Don't make this harder than it has to be, because this is so HARD for me you- NO!"

Kimberly made a mad dash for the phone, and had just gotten her hands on it when Amanda barreled into her from behind, crushing Kimberly up against the piano and knocking the wind out of her. To the detriment of her own goal, Kimberly spun around and bashed Amanda in the side of the head with the butt of the phone.

Amanda retreated, as stars and dizziness overtook her vision entirely, blinding her with exploding, shifting and changing colors. In this second - maybe two - of blindness, Amanda felt a knee connect with her gut, and then, when her vision returned and she had straightened, it was just in time for her to watch Kimberly swing a book (stolen from a nearby bookshelf) for her head.

Amanda raised an arm and took the blow without much problem, because the phone that had connected with her temple mere moments ago had made her body feel all fuzzy, and because she just didn't want to be caught doubled over and blinded twice in a row. Amanda retaliated with a simple, high kick that connected with Kimberly's chest, and sent the olive-eyed woman stumbling backwards to sprawl over the sofa she had so recently vacated.

There was nothing in this fight. There were no vows, no taunts, no threats, no crowing and reveling in the wounding, or the felling, of the other. There was only the two of them, kicking, punching, striking with palms and with feet, whirling and throwing - and, once, by Amanda, biting; only this finally made Kimberly drop the phone - and scratching. There were no cries of rage or triumph, there were no snarls, there were no screams - but for the cries and the screams of PAIN, their fight was conducted in total silence.

The fight was eventually taken - by Kimberly - out of the sitting room, through a short hallway, and into the kitchen. Kimberly slid a cleaver from the knife block, and then Amanda was forced to admit something to herself, which was that she had not, thus far, actually been TRYING to kill Kimberly (if she had been, the woman would have been dead in a matter of seconds). Her feelings of regret, of admiration and appreciation, and yes, even attraction, had been holding Amanda back from just doing away with the woman in her typical, brutal and effecient fashion, and leaving her corpse for anyone to find.

But now...seeing that giant blade, and that look in Kimberly's eyes that Amanda imagined everyone else saw in HER eyes before she took their lives...Now, Amanda could not afford to let her feelings hold her back, or else she would be the one to die today, and she would never get to be with her wonderful, beautiful little Rue. Because where once Kimberly had been fighting to LIVE, faced now with no escape, she was clearly intent on fighting for the same reason as Amanda: to kill.

'Time to end this.' thought Amanda. And end it swiftly, decisively. There would be no suffering for Kimberly, Amanda would make sure of that. It was, after all, the least she could do for Kimberly in light of everything that KIMBERLY had done for RUE.

Kimberly lunged, swiped at Amanda savagely with the knife, and Amanda took that long (but thankfully shallow) cut across her ribs for the opportunity it gave her to trap Kimberly's arm to her side using her own. Amanda (still keeping Kimberly's weapon arm locked against her stinging ribs) swung Kimberly into a cabinet, then picked her up bodily and slammed her down on the table. Sprawled and dazed though Kimberly was, it wasn't for very long, and she fought and thrashed to get back on her feet, but Amanda had the woman trapped under her weight, pressed to the table. Pinned. They were almost nose to nose as Amanda straddled Kimberly, the former woman bent low over the latter. Amanda grabbed Kimberly's throat and started to choke her with both hands.

Why couldn't Kimberly just give UP? Just let Amanda do what she needed to do? Why couldn't she see that-

Amanda's back arched as she felt a hot, searing pain go across it, and she realized with some surprise that Kimberly had bent her trapped arm in order to cut her in the back. Amanda released Kimberly's knife arm, letting the woman bring it around to be used as she saw fit. Or, at least, that was what Amanda let Kimberly believe. The moment the blade flashed for Amanda's neck, she jerked her head to the side, let Kimberly's throat go, and instead snagged the woman's wrist - and then Amanda bit it. Bit down with all the power she could muster in her jaws.

A screaming, heavily bleeding (Amanda thought she might have opened up a vein or two, or possibly even a slightly major artery) Kimberly dropped the knife onto the table beside her, where it was just shy of clattering off the edge to the floor.

Amanda snatched it up before that could happen - or before Kimberly could make it happen on PURPOSE - and then she was holding it tight, bringing it up for the inevitable trip back down, down straight for Kimberly's heart...And yet she did not do it. Not quite...yet.

Amanda felt, in that moment, that moment before Kimberly's life ended, that Kimberly deserved something that Amanda had given to no one else before: her beliefs. So Amanda, blade in one hand, and Kimberly's wrists trapped in her other hand, began to speak to the woman below her who, too, was frozen, frozen now as she, too, knew that her death was only seconds away.

"I'm going to tell you why, before I kill you." Amanda said softly, staring down into Kimberly's face. "The reason for this, and for taking Rue, is to correct the balance. All those years ago, in being repeatedly raped as I was, in living the horrible life I lived...the world gave me something back for it all. It gave me Rue. I believe, Kimberly, in the balance of the universe. That everything is scaled and traded. Balanced. My Rue was taken from me, and I never saw her again. I had to get back to her, I had to find her, to fix the imbalance that was our being apart, I knew. But until that time, until I could find her, take her in, my DAUGHTER, I knew that to satisfy the balance, the world, to give Rue a good life, happiness, I had to...I suppose, OFFER IT things in exchange. I had to balance the scales. I killed people. Many people. All for Rue, all so that the balance could be maintained, and so that she would have happiness and peace in her life, until her mother could come for her, and set things right more permanently."

"That's why I have to do this, Kimberly. As much as this hurts me, as much as I'm going to regret this for the rest of my life...I have to do it. Because you - you - refusing to let Rue and I be together, finally...you're offsetting the balance. You're PREVENTING ME from achieving the balance I've wanted, NEEDED to achieve since that day eleven years ago when my own baby was taken from my arms."

Amanda curled her fingers tighter around the knife handle, and pulled it higher still, preparing for the final thrust that would require all of the strength she possessed.

"I just thought you deserved to know why you had to die." she whispered, tears spilling down to land on Kimberly's chest. "I thought you deserved to know that I'm grateful to you for everything you've done for Rue, and that I'll regret this forever."

Amanda bit the inside of her cheek, and then she brought the blade flashing down. But she was again stopped in the act - though not by herself; by Kimberly.

"If you kill me, a part of Rue dies with me!" Kimberly coughed and gagged her words out through her damaged throat, staring up at Amanda with fearful, but now strangely calm, olive eyes.

Amanda froze, the tip of the warm and covered-with-Amanda's-blood cleaver touching the skin directly between Kimberly's breasts.

"Explain!" Amanda demanded, panic gripping her heart. She would do nothing to hurt her Rue! Was not even going to take the CHANCE that something would hurt Rue!

"I believe that you're Rue's mother, I believe that you love her, and so I believe that you want what's best for her." Kimberly spoke quickly, but still so very calmly. Amanda found herself admiring the woman all the more for her composure. In this situation, everyone Amanda had ever...CORRECTED had been crying, blubbering masses. "If you kill me, how do you think she's going to take it? How do you think she'll FEEL? I raised her, I nursed her, clothed her, taught her. Do you think that she's going to be HAPPY when she finds out that you killed me? The woman who's been as good as a mother to her in your absence?" When the knife did not come down on her - due to Amanda doing some very heavy thinking - Kimberly continued on, in slower, even more calm tones. "Look at her life now, look around you, look at all of this. She's happy, she has friends, family, she has passion. You say you believe in balance? That everything you've done has been for Rue? Well, I don't believe that with all your kills, all your sacrifices to the balance, that you were...maintaining some kind of temporary balance until the time when you could come and take Rue, and achieve the more permanent balance of mother and daughter reunited. No, I believe that you already achieved balance in Rue's life long ago, and that with each kill, you were just...making it even better for her."

"This, here, is the true balance." Kimberly said quietly, and so calmly that it was almost starting to disturb Amanda. Who ACTED LIKE THIS when they were seconds away from being killed? "Rue has peace, safety, happiness, all of it, here. If you take her away from all of that, from all that you've ever wanted for her...you'll be the one endangering the balance. You'll be the one ruining her life, and undoing everything you did for her to begin with. If you love her, if you want what's best for her, you'll let me up, you'll go away, never come back, and you'll leave Rue right here where she is."

Amanda lowered the knife, released Kimberly's throat, and straightened up, allowing the latter woman to do the same, albeit much more cautiously. Then, before Kimberly could say or do anything, Amanda let the blade fall to the kitchen floor, turned on the spot, and Disapparated, her mind fixed on the snowy mental image of Toschi Manor. Because what was there for Amanda to say, to do, that had not already been by Kimberly?

Kimberly was right - in everything she had said. About the balance, and about mothers, and, most importantly, about Rue.

And there was another consideration Kimberly had not given, had not been capable of giving, which was that, where Rue was now, she was unknown to Voldemort and his Death Eaters. But if Amanda had taken her, she would have been taking her into the war, into the line of fire, and Voldemort would have, someday, learned of her. And that was something Amanda was not willing to do, could never do: put her daughter in danger - HURT her daughter.

'Take care of my Rue, Kimberly.' Amanda thought, as she was squeezed through the pressing darkness between space and time itself.

* * *

Cedric Diggory had been leaning against a frosty tree, passing the minutes by, and had JUST decided to go and tell his friends and comrades in arms (and Kendra, who, most of all, Cedric was NOT looking forward to telling) that their great savior had, by this point, DEFINITELY abandoned them, when the aforementioned savior herself returned with the typical crack of Apparition.

"You're back!" he exclaimed, approaching Amanda Potter with nothing but total relief. "Where did you go- Jesus!"

The savior, The Girl-Who-Lived, the Chosen One, was indeed back, however, she looked remarkably, horrifyingly different than she had on her departure. Amanda was bruised, scraped, cut (a particularly nasty looking one on her left side looked as if it had been inflicted on her by a bladed weapon of some sort), her clothes were practically torn apart (her skirt seemed to be barely even hanging in there, and only by the barest strip of fabric), and she was covered in no small amount of blood. Her lips were literally dripping with the stuff, and her teeth were coated and tinged with it.

"Where did you GO?" Cedric repeated, more urgently this time. Amanda acted as if he wasn't even there. She strode - limped - past him for the front doors of Toschi Manor with (most worryingly of all) a cheerful look on her face, her eyes bright and her lips stretched into a wide smile. Cedric had no choice but to follow her. "Amanda, you leave out of nowhere, then you come back looking like you've just stepped off the set of a muggle horror movie- or- or gotten yourself into a bar fight-"

Amanda stopped so suddenly that Cedric ran smack into her backside (a backside that he noted held another blade wound, this one looking a lot worse than the one on her flank), and turned around to face him. There was amusement on her face, in her bloody smile, and in her voice as she said, "Stop talking."

"You can't just go doing things like that, getting up to who knows what!" insisted Cedric, hurrying after Amanda as she continued on her way towards the Manor entrance. "You could end up-"

Again, Amanda stopped and turned to face him, but her expression was as far from cheerful as any face could get. "Am I or am I not a twenty-two-year-old woman?" she said icily. "I'll go where I want, when I want, and do what I want, and no one is going to be locking me up - under a broom cupboard, or elsewhere - ever again."

"That's not the issue I have with what you did!" Cedric called after her, as she set off at a much faster pace than she had previously been taking. "That isn't even AN issue, in fact. It's that you compromised the security of headquarters. You could have been captured and interrogated by Death Eater forces, or worse. You could have led them right back here, or they could have forced you to do so. If someone grabs you before you Apparate, you take them along with you."

"I'll keep that in mind." Amanda said, not stopping and not looking back as she climbed the wide steps into the Manor. "Now, are you going to follow me all the way into my bedroom? Because I want to change out of these clothes and take a shower, and if you're there while I'm doing that I'm going to gouge your eyes out."

Knowing full well (particularly in light of her new appearance, and all that it implied) that Amanda could, and WOULD make good on her threat, Cedric came to a stop in the entrance hall. He watched her retreating back for a few moments before letting out a breath he had not even been aware that he had been holding.

Then, coming to a decision, he headed off for Dumbledore's office.

* * *

"While all of your concerns are valid, I remind you all that they were most certainly to be expected." Albus Dumbledore spoke to his audience in his office (which once had been Alexander Toschi's magnificent study room), who had all just finished with telling him of their CONCERNS - complaints - about one Amanda Potter. And he, in turn, had just finished with reminding THEM about the meeting he had held the day of Amanda's twenty-second birthday, an hour prior to her arrival at the time, where he had explained to them of her situation - of where she came from; a mental hospital.

"We can't TRAIN HER, Dumbledore, not when she's so...so..." Cedric threw an apologetic look Sirius's way. "Unstable, to put it nicely. Yes, it was expected, but not the LEVEL of it. The details, the-"

"If I am not mistaken, you told me Amanda Potter achieved a flawless Apparition on her first attempt - a feat achieved by only perhaps one out of a million wizards and witches." Dumbledore interrupted kindly, but, as well, perhaps a tad bit triumphantly (and even proudly, though that, he had to stamp out, because he could not CARE for this damaged woman if his ultimate plan to defeat Voldemort was to work). "Yes, Amanda seems to have a habit of becoming, let us say, easily DISTRACTED," He nodded significantly to Hermione Granger, whose cheeks went pink, and she huffed and looked away. "and, yes, she also becomes easily frustrated, easily upset, even angered, but other than her volatile and unexpected nature...I fail to see any pressing problems when it comes to her."

"She's impossible to stick on a schedule." Cedric shook his head. "She blew off Hermione's training, decided to come straight to me and ask for MINE, and since she got back from wherever she went, doing whatever she did that made her look like hell, she's stayed holed up in her room for the last two hours and won't let anybody in."

"She let me in!" Sirius said loudly, proudly - and smugly.

"That's because you were Padfoot at the time!" Hermione snorted, exasperated. "Not all of us can turn into big, great, lovable canines though, so I don't see how WE'RE going to get through to her."

"Sirius DOES handle her best." Lupin said thoughtfully. "Or rather, Amanda seems to RESPOND to Sirius best. Maybe he should take over her training?"

"While Black may have talents in the area of wooing females," Snape started, with a particular look of enjoyment on his face. "including his own goddaughter," Sirius sent a very rude hand gesture Snape's way. "he has no PRACTICAL experience with, just for example, using the Dark Arts, nor does he possess even an inkling as to the workings of ancient magics." Snape finished, giving nods to Cedric and Hermione. "He could not oversee every aspect of her training, nor could any one of any of us - which was the very reason it was decided that she would have specialized instruction, and by specialized instructors."

"Shove it, Snivellus." Sirius shot off, glaring at the potions master. "You're just pissed that she skipped off on YOUR training session, too, so YOU didn't get a chance to woo her - not that I'm worried about that or anything, seeing as you have a terrible track record with women." he added quickly.

Real anger came to Snape's face now. "Lily would have been mine, but for her regrettable...preference for big-headed, arrogant, rule-breaking, Quidditch-playing stars!"

"Big-headed? Arrogant? Aren't they the same thing?" Sirius said innocently, though with a wide grin on his face that suggested that HE was now the one enjoying himself.

Snape's anger left him as quickly as it had come, and a grin to match Sirius's came over his features. "Truly miraculous of you, Black...knowing, not only the DEFINITION of such words, but also that they are, in fact, synonymous with one another."

Deciding that he had let them play long enough, Dumbledore cleared his throat and said, "Gentlemen." to regain their attention.

"Speaking of miracles," he continued, voice not short on amusement. "that we have all lived to see the miracle that is the two of you having reconciled your differences, suggests that we can yet live to see more miracles happen. I, for one, believe that, with patience, and with the right adjustments, we CAN successfully train Amanda Potter. Now, does anyone have any unorthodox suggestions as to how we would do that?"

"I suppose we can chuck the schedule, for starters." Cedric said slowly (Hermione winced at the proposal). "I mean, if I hadn't agreed to just give Amanda her Apparition instruction when she wanted to do it, she probably wouldn't have cooperated with ANY attempts at training her at all, and that would have been hours wasted."

"Well, you all can bend to her whim just to get her to do what you want, but I'm not going to be doing that." Hermione sniffed. "I'll give myself to Voldemort, gift-wrapped and signed 'Mudblood', before I LET any woman make untoward advances on me."

"No one is suggesting that." Dumbledore spoke firmly but quietly. "I'm sure that what Cedric meant was that, since Amanda is, on account of her erratic and unpredictable behavior, impossible to put on a schedule, that we should try to be a bit more flexible when it comes to the WHEN of her training."

"I did mean that, thanks." Cedric gratefully addressed Dumbledore. "You say everything better than I do."

"He says everything better than EVERYONE." Sirius pointed out.

"Flexibility...yes, I suppose that does make sense." Hermione murmured, seeming mollified.

"What about wherever she went?" Cedric spoke up. "And her coming back how she looked?"

"She did look terrible." Sirius confessed, in the understatement of the year, looking highly distressed by the memory. "When I went in to see her and healed her injuries...well, let's just say there were a few more that I managed to get her to show me than what Cedric saw initially."

"Now that she knows how to Apparate, we can do nothing to stop her - and nor should we." Dumbledore said calmly. "As she told Cedric, she is NOT, in fact, a child in body - even if she is one in mind - and neither is she a prisoner here."

"Given her track record, not to mention her physical state, it's highly likely that she killed someone." Snape said quietly, gazing at Dumbledore with something akin to disbelief. "You're willing to allow her to take sporadic vacations to go on killing sprees?"

If that was what it took to ensure the woman's cooperation, yes, Dumbledore was perfectly willing to allow it. What were the deaths of many nameless and faceless men and women? And if their deaths helped bring about the end of Lord Voldemort's long and terrible reign...

Dumbledore could not, however, voice this opinion of his to anyone. Could not voice his great and ambitious plan to end Voldemort. To use AMANDA to bring an end to Voldemort...

"She is not a prisoner here." Dumbledore repeated, an idea - a regrettable LIE - coming to his mind. "She may leave as she sees fit. What she chooses to do during her time away, however, is also her choice, and when this war comes to an end, she will be held accountable for her actions. She will go right back into the hospital from which I collected her, so that she may, hopefully someday, be healed, and become of sound mind enough to be released _properly_."

As Dumbledore expected, this seemed to appease everyone - even Sirius, though he looked just as wounded as he did relieved and accepting. Their acceptance of his words only served to increase Dumbledore's sense of guilt, however, because only he knew of his own, true plans. And only he, Albus Dumbledore, knew that Amanda Potter was not going to go back to the hospital after they won this war.

In fact, the woman was not going to even survive war's end.

* * *

All through the afternoon, Hermione Granger had been more anxious than she could ever remember (including the weeks prior to her NEWTS results!). All through the afternoon, she had been waiting for Amanda Potter to strike at her, just as Hermione had heard - from the hospital staff she had gone to speak with in the past week to get a much better picture of Amanda's life (and of Amanda herself) than Dumbledore had decidedly NOT painted for the Order - that Amanda did.

And Hermione had been flat out terrified in the ballroom, in that moment when Amanda had gone from upset and confused to just...cold. Cold and furious.

But nothing had happened THEN either, and Hermione was left wondering just what was going on.

Why had this woman, why WAS this woman, who, by all horrifying reports, crippled or killed (more often the latter) anyone who seemed to strike her fancy, on any day, at any given time...why had she NOT killed Hermione right then and there in the ballroom? And WHY was she NOT killing Hermione now? Or at least rupturing an eyeball or breaking a leg?

Hermione knew this was different from Amanda's usual behavior. For one thing, because, after a kill, Amanda would, reportedly, act as if nothing at all had happened, and continue doing whatever she wanted to do. But that was not the case here, now, Hermione could see that much.

Amanda was sitting two seats down to Hermione's left at the dining room table, with Sirius and Parvati between them, and she was stealing glances at Hermione - had been all throughout dinner! Glances that were most definitely, very decidedly NOT NICE.

Which just did not add up with what Hermione knew about the woman. Amanda had NOT killed or maimed her on the spot, and she was NOT acting as if nothing at all had happened between them. So what was it? What was Amanda Potter THINKING? What was going on in that alien head of hers? What did she have in store for Hermione?

And could she just hurry up and DO whatever it was she was planning to do to Hermione, because Hermione could not STAND this dread, this cruel waiting? Why DID Amanda have to be so cruel? So horrible? Why did she have to kill and hurt? What drove her to do what she did, what reasons, what logic, if any, did she have in her head?

Amanda was not unintelligent, was not incapable of compromise, as Hermione had gleaned from the hospital. Seemingly, anyway, because, the one and only recorded instance of Amanda Potter NOT acting in accordance with everything anyone knew about her - when she (just a week ago, in fact), rather than murdering a security guard for eyeing her up, had instead turned to local squib and doctor, Edward Rayli, to put an end to the guard's rudeness - she had been on the way to see her cousin, who had lived with her during her childhood of horrendous abuse, and it had been at this family reunion that Amanda had, after growing more and more agitated, thrown herself at her cousin in what seemed to be her typical berserk rage.

Hermione could only conclude from this that Amanda Potter was capable of holding herself in check if, and only if, it meant she would reach a greater target for her murderous ways. Or rather, that she was intelligent enough to NOT put at risk a chance to take care of something more important.

Which meant that Amanda Potter could, in fact, prioritize things; she had decided that killing her cousin was more meaningful to her than taking the life of an offensive man.

All of which, while being of great interest to Hermione, brought her no closer to understanding her current, particular situation.

Refusing to kill Hermione could not possibly have been for the reason of, for the intelligence of, realizing that to kill Hermione would be to forfeit a chance to kill someone ELSE - someone who Amanda saw as a much more important and meaningful objective than Hermione herself was.

Hermione had not been standing in the way of anything - anyone - Amanda might have wanted, KILLING Hermione would not have prevented Amanda from reaching someone else, so there should have been no turning around, no stalking out of the ballroom as Amanda had done. There should have just been Amanda, face full of rage, throwing herself at Hermione in a bid to strike her dead on the spot.

Unless Hermione HAD been in the way like that. Unless killing Hermione WOULD HAVE, by consequences only Amanda could see, stopped her from killing someone else.

But if THAT was the case...

Hermione gazed up and down the magically extended dining table, biting her lip in both anxiety and thought.

If that was the case, then who was it here, among the Order, among people who had only ever been nice and kind to Amanda Potter - a fact that Amanda had, herself, admitted several surprising times over the past week - that the woman wanted to kill?

Or was Hermione just overthinking it? Was it simply because she was a fellow woman that Amanda had refused to kill her?

No, that could not possibly be it; although Amanda did, clearly, harbor a particular and intense hate for men, she had killed other women before. Her aunt, for a start, and then, in the hospital, female patients, nurses, and guards. And it had all been done without hesitation.

Then did the answer lie in how Amanda chose her victims? No one had ever been able to make even a wild guess about that, about why she killed who she killed. It seemed random, her killings. But they couldn't be random, because to be random would mean she would not have PURPOSELY spared that guard in order to get to her cousin! No, there was a pattern, there was a reason, a logic, just...just no one but Amanda herself could understand it.

People often thought that insanity equated to an automatic LACK of intelligence, of complexity, but, ironically, that was the exact opposite of how it was; the insane were some of the most complex people on the face of the Earth, as well as, in some ways, some of the smartest.

But Hermione was ALSO an incredibly intelligent woman. So SURELY she should be capable of figuring Amanda Potter out! Of figuring out just WHY the woman had not killed her four hours ago on the ballroom floor, and just WHY Amanda was looking at Hermione the way she was NOW - a way that suggested she had NOT forgotten whatever Hermione had done to her, whether Hermione herself knew what that was or not.

Then a thought struck Hermione. Was it, in actuality, something so simple?  
So...NORMAL? Was it Hermione's refusal of Amanda's kiss, of the woman's thinking, and admittance, that she loved Hermione, that had caused Amanda to stalk off as she had done? Was THAT what was now causing her to look at Hermione sideways with so much anger?

But that presented the same problem as anything ELSE Amanda did - and what she was NOT doing now. Amanda was NOT killing Hermione, had NOT killed her dead in the ballroom for her transgression. Oh, Hermione knew she HAD, in fact, hurt Amanda by rebuking her, she had seen it in the woman's emerald green, tear-filled eyes, but...

But then why, why, WHY was Hermione NOT already dead?

Putting her frustrations in trying to understand the insane woman aside - though not her worries as to just WHEN Amanda would be jumping out at her from a dark closet - Hermione cast her eyes about for the platter of rolls she had spied earlier on in the mealtime that was more feast than anything. The rolls, she found, were in front of Amanda (who was the only one at the table NOT seated properly - or doing ANYTHING properly; her legs were up on the table, and she was balancing three separate plates of food on her stomach, and picking at it all with her bare hands and fingers).

'Of course.' Hermione thought dryly. Swallowing her fear and gathering her courage, she turned in her chair and said to Amanda, across Parvati and Sirius, "Amanda, could you please pass me the rolls?"

"No." Amanda answered - through a mouthful of chicken, pudding (chocolate, of course), and what looked to be the drippings of ranch dressing - without even looking at Hermione.

 _Complete lack of understanding of her or not, you really should have seen that one coming_ , Hermione berated herself, pulling out her wand, so as to float the rolls over to herself.

Suddenly Amanda sat bolt upright in her chair, legs dropping off the table, her plates sliding off her belly and onto the floor, and...

"Here!" Amanda cried, voice filled with panic, and an intense, genuine fear, as she stood up, snatched up the plate of rolls, and then came hurrying right over to set them down in front of Hermione.

Everyone was staring at Amanda, though Hermione most of all.

Sirius had risen from his chair, as well, his concerned eyes on his goddaughter. "What's wrong, Amanda?" he said quickly, his gaze sliding to Hermione, then back again to Amanda.

Amanda stood, for a long moment, stock still, and Hermione recognized a thinking mind when she saw one, then, to Hermione's further bewilderment, a smile appeared on Amanda's face, as the woman's whole being relaxed. NOW Amanda looked how she SHOULD HAVE LOOKED after she SHOULD HAVE KILLED Hermione some four hours ago: as if nothing had happened between them whatsoever, including their exchange and actions of this very dinner.

"Nothing." Amanda addressed Sirius, in a voice of assurance, her green eyes bright with sincerity and even delight. "Nothing at all, I promise." she added, and then, of all things, she LAUGHED.

"Amanda, what-" Hermione began, feeling so confused now that she almost felt like crying. This woman was THE most impossible puzzle in the HISTORY of puzzles - and Hermione had solved some of the greatest puzzles of her time!

"Enjoy your rolls!" Amanda cut across her in earnest, as she resumed her seat and set about pulling whole platters of food to herself, and then started eating (to Hermione's utter HORROR) STRAIGHT FROM THE PLATTERS! "I have the butter, too, if you want it." she added, in tones Hermione recognized as PLAYFUL, indicating the nearby butter boat with a nod of her sharp, narrow head.

"Hermione, what just happened?" Sirius inquired, still standing, and still looking between the two women.

"I have no idea." Hermione said, in a murmur that was more to herself than to Sirius.

* * *

"Why, exactly, did you call us here?" posed Alicia Spinnet, her eyes riveted to Cho Chang, who sat upon a sink in the womens' bathroom inside King's Cross station at night as if it were a throne.

Cho, legs crossed, hands in her lap, grinned around at the ones who had answered her call. They were enough for the start of what would be her modest little following. Alicia Spinnet, Katie Bell, Anthony Goldstein, Lavender Brown, Terry Boot, Romilda Vane, Demelza Robins, Jimmy Peakes, and, last but not least, Hannah Abbott, who, after miraculously surviving having Grimmauld Place collapse on top of her three months ago, as well as having endured, all this time since, Death Eater torture and interrogation methods during her time at St. Mungo's (something of an irony, Cho thought), Cho had spirited the woman out of the hospital and healed her injuries, which had had the very fortunate effect of securing both Hannah's loyalty AND her undying gratitude/love.

The latter two things being just the sort of deep, intense feelings that Cho had needed so badly to feed upon for so long now, and was as glad to have it as she would have been water after weeks in a desert.

"Why, I'm so glad you asked, Alicia." Cho smirked at the woman, toying with her magnificently blue fingernails, and uncrossing her legs for the purpose of kicking them back and forth in the air, the better to highlight the matching blue heels and clingy, shoulderless dress (which happened to have a thigh-high leg slit along the left side) she wore, along with the sapphire-studded ankle bracelets. "You're here because I, humble, honorable, and kind as I am, have an offer for you. For too long there's been a war going on, fought between the members of the Death Eaters," she held up her arm, showing the Dark Mark - just below a sapphire bracelet - to all assembled. "and the members of the misguided and hopelessly outnumbered Order of the Phoenix." Cho gave a nod to Hannah, who was watching her with sparkling-eyed, rapt attention, her chest heaving with each breath that passed through her pale, parted lips. "How many years, I ask you, have we WASTED under, either the old, wrinkled heel of Albus Dumbledore, or the younger, yet more ECCENTRIC heel of Lord Voldemort? How many years have we spent being nothing but their little pawns, pitted against one another mercilessly and uncaringly, like pieces on a chess board?"

Cho nodded, more to herself than to her audience, who were, admittedly to her satisfaction, looking very interested in what she was saying. "Yes, my friends, our lives mean nothing to either of them, our traumas and our sorrows nothing compared to what one side hopes to achieve over the other - total domination." she continued to lament. "That is the reason, I hope you've all noticed, why I didn't invite either Ginny Weasley or Pansy Parkinson." Cho nearly gritted in her disdain. "They're perfect representations of the thing we're all here hoping to escape from! They want death, destruction, and none of us matter to them! We have no feelings, no thoughts, no dreams or hopes! Why, they'd see us all CRUSHED in their pursuit of their desires - and not bat even an eyelash at our passing!"

"I say...I say we deserve far better than what either side has offered any of us over all these years." she said softly, looking pointedly to Hannah. "I say that we-"

"Are we going to hold future meetings in this ladies' room, or are we going to get our own headquarters?" spoke short, but broad-shouldered, blond Jimmy Peakes suddenly, looking uncomfortably around himself.

Cho strangled back a nasty retort, sounding as if she were growling in her efforts to restrain her irritation. Still, she wasn't entirely successful in that endeavor. "Don't interrupt, you miserable- ah, I mean...yes, yes, I do have a place in mind. A perfectly secure, perfectly splendid place." she hastily caught herself, losing her snarl and forcing a reassuring smile at Jimmy. He was one who had been nearly the reverse of Cho: forced to be a Death Eater, then escaped and joined the Order, and now...now he was neither.

She would have entertained thoughts of romancing him, had it not been for his tendency to ask stupid questions, something that grinded on her nerves like no other. After all, CEDRIC had never asked stupid questions. LUNA had never asked stupid questions. And Cho didn't want some-

"What's this place, then?" Anthony said, in his quiet, intelligent voice. HE was just the sort of person Cho liked: quiet, smart, and good to look at on top of it all. Better still, she knew he found her attractive (after all, who DIDN'T?).

Cho tossed her shiny, dark ponytail over her shoulder and gave Anthony a long, admiring look. "Somewhere neither of the warring sides, so pathetic as they are in it, will find us." she purred. "Deep in the bowels of New York city, in America."

"Brilliant." Anthony complimented, giving her a nod, a smile, and a returning, long look at her figure. "Their war is for THIS country, they won't even think to look in OTHER countries for our base - and even if they do, they can't afford to waste time and effort in that manner." he added, a tinge of excitement entering into his voice.

"And that's not to mention that if any known Death Eaters entered wizarding American territory, they'd be captured and detained on sight." spoke Katie Bell, running a hand through her blond hair (which she kept to one side).

"Exactly." Cho said smugly. "Now, those of you who want to join me in freeing yourselves of the shackles that have binded you for so long...sign here please." From out the top of her dress she procured a sheet of lined paper, where at the top it read: Freedom Be Mine. "Those of you who don't, well, unfortunately I can't have you running off and telling either side about this, so I'll have to kill you." she said casually, drawing her wand from out of her bosom and holding it daintily between two fingers. "I'm sure you all understand."

"Like any of us would be stupid enough to say no in the face of THAT..." Demelza muttered, eyeing Cho's wand warily.

"Precisely." Cho stated. "Now! Make your choice!" she commanded, holding up both wand and paper, side by side.

"It's cursed, isn't it?" Romilda Vane said softly, her eyes riveted to the sheet of paper. Romilda was a strange one. She hadn't been either a member of the Death Eaters or the Order, and she was only here because she didn't want to be recruited someday by either group. "Cursed to kill us if we say or do anything to betray either you, the group, or the location of the base?"

"There might be a slight possibility of that." Cho conceded with a chuckle, and a grin that said: what could you REALLY have expected from me? "So, be sure you really want this before making your choice, because once you're in you're in, and if you ever decide you want out...well, you'll be OUT, if you get my meaning."

Hannah Abbott, Cho was pleased to see, was the very first person to sign her name on the paper - and after, Cho was pleased to FEEL the kiss that Hannah planted on her lips.

"So, what exactly are we going to be doing?" Katie questioned anxiously, after she (and everyone else) had signed their names. Katie's reason for being here was a secret, and a secret known only to Cho: Katie had twin children, twin boys (both squibs, as far as Katie could tell) - along with a muggle husband - in the muggle world. Naturally, if Voldemort were to expand his reign to the muggle world, Katie's family would be discovered and targeted, and that was something Katie did not want to happen.

"We're going to be paying Voldemort a surprise visit." Cho spoke with only hatred and disgust (deep, intense feelings that Cho reveled in), her voice quivering. She had realized during her many hours of pondering that it had not been the FREEDOM that had turned her into a husk of a woman and gotten her girlfriend killed, but VOLDEMORT, the one who had GIVEN Cho that freedom, and, as such, she felt a certain companionship with, a certain sympathy for, Katie. "Unlike the Order, we know perfectly well where our lord and leader is, and we have more than sufficient means with which to reach him...and destroy him."


	5. Snape's Worst Mistake

Deep within the bowels of the Department of Mysteries, in a room as large and circular as a baseball stadium, Lord Voldemort appeared out of thin air, having Apparated directly into the room. As massive as this room was, it was far from empty. Lining the circular wall were dozens upon dozens of glass pillars. Cylinders - ten feet tall, and half that in diameter - all of which contained within them vaguely formed shapes floating in thick, sea green liquid.

In the very center of the room was a massive cage, all metal bars and magical pulsing barriers, twenty feet by twenty feet, inside of which stood a lone, dark purple-scaled, simultaneously slender yet hulking, and incredibly, oh so obviously, pissed off dragon. It would likely become all the more so once it observed the similarities of the shapes within the surrounding tanks in regards to its own shape; although this was a capability that, for the moment, it did not yet possess...

"Theodore!" Voldemort cheerfully greeted the sole human occupant of the room (other than himself, of course); Theodore Nott, tall, pale, broad-shouldered, extremely handsome, and highly intelligent. He was ever calm, ever logical, his expression rarely ever changing. "I see you have been nothing but diligent in your work on Project Uplift!" Voldemort eyed the caged dragon for a brief moment, a satisfactory smile on his face, before turning his attention back to Theodore. "I admit, I find myself surprised that, after a mere six months, you have asked me here to witness the fruits of your labor."

"I, too, must admit something: the loss of Luna Lovegood three months prior severely hampered the progress of Project Uplift." spoke Theodore, his voice devoid of inflection, his analytical gaze studying the caged dragon rather than fixing on Voldemort. "You have brought the diadem?"

"Indeed." Voldemort smiled, and raised the diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw for Theodore's inspection in response; Theodore, the only one who could get away with, first suggesting that Voldemort had made a mistake, then, second, not giving Voldemort the proper attention that was given to him by all other Death Eater forces, and then following these actions up with making a DEMAND of Lord Voldemort (as if he, Theodore, were the one in charge rather than Voldemort).

But then again, Voldemort HAD gotten more...FORGIVING and, though not trusting, at least OPEN, and even, in some ways, FRIENDLY lately. While Voldemort would never be loved by his subordinates, and while the ones in command positions (the older and more senior Death Eaters, such as Lucius Malfoy, Nott senior, and the Lestranges, etc) knew what he was really like, Voldemort was determined not to allow another fiasco like Peter Pettigrew's betrayal (a terrible blow, the double-crosser double-crossing the Death Eaters, and making away with a vast amount of valuable information to give to the Order - information that, regrettably, Voldemort had thought the rat too moronic to ever worry about his hearing of it) - or, even further back than that, the end of the first war, when all his followers had betrayed and abandoned him in a heartbeat - happen to him again.

To this end, Voldemort had, some several years ago now, done away with the Muggle-born Registration Commission (though, it had also been an act of practicality; he had realized that it would be simply an impossibility to try and maintain his grip on the wizarding world - not to mention keep the world he ruled over in any kind of FUNCTIONAL STATE - with a few dozen pure-bloods and the more numerous yet-still-not-numerous-enough half-bloods like himself). Yes, Lord Voldemort had been forced by circumstances to become much more...RELAXED when it came to Muggle-born wizards and witches. They were even allowed to attend Hogwarts again (though, to be fair, EVERYONE was allowed to attend the school, because attendance was mandatory). And, Voldemort supposed, there had also been a bit of sentimentality in that decision, what with having come from the muggle world himself.

Admittedly, it had taken Voldemort some time to learn the lesson he had learned, but he HAD still learned it, eventually; the lesson that ruling by fear alone would not secure the true loyalty - and certainly not the top tier productivity and efficiency - of those under his command.

And yet, despite all of this in mind, despite Voldemort's new style of leadership, despite his attempts at, to put it bluntly, brainwashing his newer generation of followers, these were not the things that allowed Theodore to get away with his behavior in regards to Voldemort.

At least, not entirely, anyway.

No, what really and honestly allowed Theodore to do as he did was...Voldemort genuinely LIKED the young man. It might have well been Voldemort's old age (not that he APPEARED old, what with his regular ingesting of the Elixer of Life, as well as some cosmetic potions and spells that had enabled him to regain his old, handsome appearance and even body; that of a man in his prime, his twenties) but he had found himself in recent years wanting something he had not wanted since childhood: a friend.

And a friend he had found in Theodore Nott.

The young man was intelligent, creative, logical, calm, handsome, and never offensive in tone or conduct, even when Voldemort may have taken offense ANYWAY had anyone ELSE said or done what Theodore often did to him.

In all honesty, Voldemort found himself...ENJOYING Theodore's company. It was not a sadistic joy, either, but more of a simple, pure joy, of the kind he had had in his childhood but had lost SINCE.

"How DID Lovegood's regrettable demise affect Project Uplift, exactly?" Voldemort inquired softly, feeling slightly, truly curious to know.

Theodore finally turned to regard Voldemort, face expressionless as ever, his body held still as a statue when not in motion, as always. "Luna was possessed of a logic that, while being undeniably twisted on the whole, was also something that, at times, I found to be...oddly straightforward. This, combined with her intellect, enabled Project Uplift to make some surprisingly great strides in a short amount of time. With her loss, for a time, progress was slowed. However, with my uninterrupted solitude of these months since, as well as the additional resources you have reassigned to the project in light of the scattering of - and subsequent silence from - Order forces, I am pleased to assert that the Project has regained its former level of productivity."

"Well then, let us not stand on ceremony, Theodore." Voldemort grinned, offering the diadem to the man (the SCIENTIST, for that was what he was, albeit a magical one; a people, a profession, that Voldemort had become VERY interested in in this past year, after he had come to realize just what kind of powerful and advantageous creations - inventions - the Muggles had made on their end of the separation of societies). It was true that, when Voldemort had left Muggle society as a child, there had been nothing he had left behind that could have interested him, but now...now there were things that amazed even him, and even made him realize a horrible truth, which was that if it ever came down to an open war between magic and nonmagic, it would not be magic that would emerge triumphant. That was why Voldemort was making such strides as of late to infiltrate them, to seize them and their world without too much of a fuss, without arousing a fight in them. He had to take them before it would be TOO LATE to take them, before THEY took THEM, wizards and witches, and he had to take them without their even realizing it.

That, and Muggles had some VERY impressive, even shocking, weapons - killing and destructive technologies - that Voldemort just HAD to have for himself.

The nuclear warhead, for instance; the power to destroy entire cities in a literal blink of an eye...

In all the history of magic, there had never been any spell that could come even clsoe to matching that level of destructive power.

"You have transferred your soul fragment from the diadem?" Theodore questioned, examining the diadem with eyes and with diagnostic spells cast by his drawn wand. "It would be illogical - not to mention it would present an unaccounted for and unwanted variable in the process that is about to unfold before us - to leave it within the diadem."

Voldemort's grin widened. "Your concern is very much noted. I have, of course, transferred the contents of the former Horcrux into another container. And rest assured, Theodore, that the diadem is otherwise unaffected; it retains all the magical capabilities that are needed for the success of Project Uplift."

"Your terminology is inaccurate, but your logic is satisfactory." Theodore said simply. He ceased all diagnostic spells, and lifted his gaze once more to the purple-scaled dragon that stood motionless in the cage. "Indeed, the diadem does still carry that which is to be returned, after hundreds of years, to dragons - starting with Elvira."

"Elvira?" Voldemort repeated, feeling amused as he, too, looked on the dragon, which was in turn staring right back at him and Theodore with its burning, yellow, cat-like irises. "You've named the creature? Why, Theodore, I had no idea you could be so sentimental."

Theodore shook his head slowly. "Not sentiment: Logic. If this female is to serve us, she requires a means of identification - within our ranks, as well as her own." he added, sweeping his gaze around the massive chamber, and over the many dozens of tanks that contained still-growing dragons.

"And you're certain she WILL serve us - along with her...children?" said Voldemort, putting a certain STRESS on the question.

"Yes." Theodore stated, utterly unphased by that stressing. "Rowena's diadem was, in its original state - a state you have now returned it to - not dissimilar to a Horcrux; except it is a vessel for far more abstract substances than pieces of soul. The so-called wisdom of Rowena Ravenclaw that this diadem imparts upon its wearer, is in fact the stolen intellect and accumulated knowledge and memories of the dragons of the era, as well as all previous eras."

Voldemort found himself looking intently upon Theodore as the latter man spoke, for the Dark Lord was CERTAIN he had just heard a particular stress on the word "stolen", as well as no small trace of...emotion. But that just wasn't Theodore Nott; SURELY Voldemort had simply imagined it.

"Surely you are not saying what I THINK you're saying." Voldemort said in quiet surprise.

"I am saying, Lord Voldemort-" Theodore was also the only one in Voldemort's ranks who could ever, and would ever, get away with uttering his name. "-that Muggle tales of ancient dragons in possession of superior intellect and formidable magical abilities...are indeed...accurate. After many hundreds of years of medieval humans, Muggle and magical alike, being terrorized and, at times, ruled by ancient dragons, Rowena Ravenclaw, intelligent enough as she was on her own, realized which aspects of dragon kind were giving them their advantage, and she devised a way to eliminate the threat the dragons posed."

Oh, Voldemort HADN'T imagined it, oh no. He could hear the disdain and the anger in Theodore's tones, as trace as the emotions were. And, what was more, it made sense to Voldemort, and he spoke that sense aloud, "And so Rowena stole from the dragon race their intelligence, their knowledge and their memories. I can see how that would be...UPSETTING to you, Theodore, being the man of such obvious intellect that you are."

"Correct." Theodore stated. "She stole that which made them superior to - and allowed them to rule - her kind, and contained it within the diadem, thereby causing the dragons of her time, as well as all their offspring since, to be nothing but what they have been for the past thousand years: Mindless beasts. Creatures of instinct alone."

"And you are certain that your dragons will serve us?" Voldemort repeated his earlier question patiently. "Will not giving them back their memories also give them back some very EXCELLENT reasons to desire to subjugate all of humanity all over again, as they did in medieval times - especially if they learn what, precisely, was the cause of their downfall?"

"Unlikely." Theodore replied. "I will only be granting Elvira and her offspring the intelligence of their ancients, and the knowledge of how to use the powers their ancients possessed - not their memories. Instead, I will be implanting in them very...edited memories centered around the current war, as well as the simple knowledge of their roles in it, their place in Death Eater ranks, and, naturally, that they are to ultimately answer to you, my Lord. They will possess no knowledge of the ancient past, nor the fate of their ancients, and therefore they will have no logical reason to develop a hatred of human kind, and, by extension, no desire to see it placed again under their rule."

"Of course, of course." Voldemort agreed thoughtfully. "They will, naturally, need to be carefully kept...UNAWARE of certain...certain FACTS. Ignorance is, after all, bliss."

"An illogical axiom. Shall I proceed, Lord Voldemort?"

"By all means, Theodore!" Voldemort swept a delighted arm at Elvira that was not entirely a feigned bit of theatrics on his part for the purpose of keeping up with the act that was his new style of leadership; he was genuinely excited about, and impressed and pleased with, Theodore's work. "Give to us the very first in what is to be our armada of ultimate Order hunters! Because as surely as we plan to hunt down and eliminate their last little rabble of resistance to our cause, THEY are surely planning their next strike against any one of our dozens of locations of operations!"

"A logical assumption." came Theodore's typical, almost bland reply. That said, he pointed his wand at the daidem held in his hand, and immediately it began to glow a deep, dark purple that nearly matched the shade of Elvira's scales, and then, quite suddenly, a smoke-like trail of magical energy flew out from the diadem to connect with Elvira herself (passing through, both the bars, and the magical barriers erected around the physical cage), seeming to feed itself into her forehead.

Elvira reared her head, and stumbled (as much as a DRAGON can STUMBLE) backwards, emitting a loud, shrill cry, and slamming her front paws on the floor repeatedly, much like a human having a fit - or else one in a great and terrible amount of pain.

"Is she experiencing pain?" Voldemort inquired, with a very rare, very fleeting flash of sympathy; he knew how he would feel were it Nagini, HIS pet, one time caretaker, constant companion, and creature he was most fond of above anyone and anything else, in this position and not Elvira. Also, there was the little known fact about him that he had always, since childhood, preferred animals to humans partially fueling his sympathetic inquiry.

Theodore studied Elvira (who continued to thrash about in the confines of her cage, as the smoke continued to stream into her head) for a brief moment. "Undoubtedly. To gain intellect when one had not previously possessed it, when one was but a simple creature of instinct, is doubtless an excruciating experience. Fortunately, the transfer process should be quite...short." Indeed, even as he finished his sentence, the diadem lost its glow, and the purple smoke dissipated, severing the link between diadem and dragon.

Almost as suddenly, Elvira's shrieks cut off, and she, with a whip-like turn of her head, focused her yellow cat eyes (eyes that now burned with an incredibly fierce intellect, a complexity that before had been lacking) on Voldemort. She had raised herself to her full height now, and her wings made to expand in a motion, and with such a speed, that it was, almost very literally, an explosion. Her cage, however, while large, was not so large as to allow her to open even a tenth of her massive wingspan, and she gave a snort of blue flames through her nostrils that was, unmistakably, an expression of very concious annoyance.

Lord Voldemort was not Lord Voldemort for nothing, and so, even under the full, sole focus of an irritated female dragon now possessed of a higher intellect than the average human, he stepped closer to the cage and locked eyes with her.

"Elvira." Voldemort began, in soft, genial tones. "Am I to take it that you understand my words?" Slowly, Elvira nodded her massive, triangular head in response. "Excellent! Then you know very well who I am, yes? And you know, too, what it is you are to do? To serve the Death Eater cause in any way ordered of you?"

Elvira tilted her head, as if considering his words, working through all the complexities of a language, then- "Yes, Lord Voldemort." her low, almost deep (for a female, anyway) voice issued forth from her, by combination of her rumbling throat, working jaws, and flicking tongue; impossible sounds coming from such a creature as her (but then, magic often made the impossible possible).

Voldemort threw a half glance at Theodore, vague amusement coloring his voice as he said, "Was it a LOGICAL decision to give her that little...ah, QUIRK of yours?"

A thin, almost imperceptible smile came to Theodore's lips. "The created always receive traits from the creator."

"So they do." Voldemort chuckled in agreement. "Elvira - what with your...awakening, I have no doubt that you are eager to put your newfound abilities to use. I'm pleased to be able to inform you that, indeed, very soon, you will be put to the test you so desire."

"I hunt Order members." spoke Elvira, tail swishing back and forth in obvious anticipation.

"Indeed you do - and you will." grinned Voldemort widely, and almost indulgently. "For you see that is the very test I refer to: the test of combat, of battle! The test of a mighty warrior such as yourself."

Elvira's burning yellow gaze swept over the tanks that surrounded her, then settled, once more, on Voldemort. "I have memory of birthing these." Her voice held an unmistakable fury, and blue flames burst from her mouth with every word she spoke. "They will leave these..." She paused, obviously unable to find a way to describe, or find the proper word for, the cylinders, then gave up on the task entirely, and finished with, "They will hunt with me?"

"You will not be alone for long, no." Voldemort placated. "In time, I assure you, your children shall join you in combat. But we must first see how you fair in battle, what you alone can accomplish. After all...we would not want to send your young into battle without knowing whether or not they could survive it."

There was a moment's silence.

"Yes..." Elvira accepted slowly, seeming to find her calm. "Where will I find battle? Where will I find...prey?"

Voldemort smiled. "At a place of Death Eater operations that will be simply too irresistible a target for the Order of the Phoenix to pass up..."

* * *

Severus Snape, potions master, Death Eater, double agent, and former teacher at Hogwarts, could not BELIEVE that, after all the various brands and levels of torture he had endured in his life, the forces of the universe had managed to find still yet a new and much more agonizing way to torture him.

This new and terrible torture had a name, and that name was Amanda Potter.

Amanda potter: the daughter of Lily Potter, whom Snape had, and would always, love so greatly and so deeply that it burned; Amanda Potter, a woman who was the splitting image, the EXACT REPLICA of her mother, and who was just a few months older than Lily had been at the time of her death; Amanda Potter, a woman who was proving herself to be utterly obnoxious, ill-mannered, violently unpredictable, developmentally stunted (she was much, MUCH more like a twelve-year-old girl than a twenty-two-year-old woman), highly and violently averse to any sort of physical contact (at least, contact not initiated by HER, Snape had noticed with some manner of interest; it seemed perfectly acceptable, in Amanda's mind, for HER to lay hands on OTHER people - and even lips, according to Hermione Granger - but anyone who dared to lay a hand on HER, even in the most casual of ways, would find themselves suddenly and inexplicably nursing a broken arm), possessed of an incredible temper (and the sub ability to throw incredible temper TANTRUMS), and...just plain insane.

But, other than Amanda's clear and obvious state of insanity - infuriating, alarming, and even frightening as it was at times (something Snape would never admit to) - she HAD had her...OTHER moments in the past week since her arrival at Toschi Manor. Moments of...

"I want you to have her."

Well, waking up an hour earlier than usual, answering a never-ending stream of knocking at his door, and opening the door to find Amanda Potter standing there offering him a snow-white owl was definitely...not a bad way to start the morning, Snape decided. Even if it was murdering him inside to look at her. Even if he knew that to NOT look at her would murder him inside, just the same.

Amanda, in addition to being possessed of Lily's temper, had her mother's same ability to constantly and consistently make Snape feel awkward and embarrassed - and mostly for no discernible reasons. Snape, admittedly, felt like a floundering teenager again whenever he was around Amanda. And he simultaneously found himself hating the feeling AND loving it.

"You...you want to give me...what did you name her?" Snape blinked at, first Amanda, then the owl in confusion.

"Hedwig." Amanda answered promptly, smiling such a wide and cheery smile that Snape sunk a few dozen feet deeper towards the bottom of the pool he was currently drowning in, while also feeling something of a SPRING in his steps as he moved closer to Amanda to take the owl from her cupped palms. His hands brushed with hers, and Snape swore his room actually tilted.

"She was your birthday gift." Snape found himself feebly protesting the acceptance of the owl, even after he had already accepted it. To give himself something to do (and perhaps stop his room from going sideways), he turned from Amanda and retreated deeper into his room to place the owl on the windowsill after opening it. That blast of cold mountain air did Snape some great amount of good, as well. He turned back to face Amanda with a bit more focused a mind and less erratic emotions, only to find that she had - as he REALLY should have expected from her - come into his room and shut the door behind her as naturally and unconcernedly as if it were HER room.

And then Snape was suddenly, acutely aware of the fact that he was clad in nothing but a simple pair of pants, and the fact that Amanda was clad in nothing but a very sheer, very short silk nightdress that barely went an inch or two down her thighs, and enabled him to see without much effort the details of her figure beneath the fabric.

'She's not Lily, she's not Lily, she's not Lily...But she IS Lily's DAUGHTER, and doesn't THAT make this scene so much worse? Not to mention the fact that she is - while certainly, undeniably, definitely not PHYSICALLY a child - most undeniably MENTALLY a child.'

The admittedly large part of Snape that kept seeing and thinking "Lily" whenever he gazed on Amanda was RELISHING this scene, this situation that he had longed to be in for so long with Lily when he had been younger, but the MUCH larger, more rational part of him - the part that was responsible for the above, very rational turn of his thoughts - was feeling almost sick, even disgusted with the scene he found himself in. THAT part of Snape felt like some kind of pervert. Because, even with simply NOT taking everything about Amanda into account, what kind of man lusted after the child of a woman he had once loved?

Yes, Snape definitely felt ten different kinds of dirty.

"Don't look at me like that." Amanda's sudden, icy cold voice breezed into Snape's ears, wrenching him into the here and now.

'Oh, fuck.'

"I- I-" Snape stammered, taking an involuntary step back as he suitably and quickly averted his gaze. "I'm sorry." he finally managed to get out, with total sincerity. "You're...right. I shouldn't...rude of me..."

The intense glitter in emerald eyes that was a mark of Amanda's insanity lessened, and the very cold expression on her face faded with startling suddenness. Her eyebrows were no longer narrowed, her hands were no longer shaking, pale fists, and every other muscle in her body did not look primed and ready, as if she had been on the verge of lunging at Snape and...well, doing the things that he could only imagine she had done yesterday, when she had mysteriously but impressively Apparated on first attempt, only to return with a great many bruises, knife wounds, startlingly fresh bloodstains, and no explanations whatsoever.

Snape suddenly felt a wave of near overwhelming shock as he reminded himself that that woman of yesterday, and the woman - the CHILD - of a few moments ago who had come to his door to offer him her birthday present of an owl, were one and the same person.

"I don't need Hedwig." Amanda said simply, relaxed and smiling again, looking like nothing but an innocent little girl once more. "I have Padfoot." she added, and Snape reflected that this was one of those moments where Amanda just came across as...well, extraordinarly sweet and...and CUTE. Cute in an innocent, childish sort of way (which in itself was still shocking, seeing as Snape had never found ANY child to be cute in his life).

"Have you told the mut that he makes a better pet than he does a human?" Snape responded, feeling rather amused at the scene his imagination was playing out for him.

"Fourteen times." confirmed Amanda, giggling something fierce.

The sight, the sound, it was enough to make Snape's heart flutter, and a painful smile appear on his face; he didn't smile often, and as a result his facial features had become rather FIXED.

"Thank you." Snape said, nodding to the snowy owl on his windowsill that was looking at Amanda in betrayal (if an owl could look betrayed, anyway). He honestly had no idea WHAT he was going to do with the thing. No one ever sent owls to or from Toschi Manor as a matter of course - and security - and Snape honestly had no particular desire for a pet. He knew he wouldn't be able to keep up with taking care of it, and he knew that he would never be able to face Amanda again if- no, WHEN she would learn that he had killed the owl by way of neglect. Which, now that he thought about it, would probably cause HER to kill HIM - particularly in light of what he had managed to glean, both from Hermione Granger, and from his own visit to the hospital this past week; mainly that Amanda had herself suffered great and intense neglect and abuse at the hands of her aunt and uncle during the first eleven years of her life.

Oh yes, Amanda learning that Snape had gotten her owl killed in the same manner SHE had been treated as a child would most definitely put him at the very top of her must-kill-today list.

In the interest of avoiding that eventuality, Snape thought that perhaps he could give the owl off to Lupin or some other Order member that he knew would actually care for the animal.

"You're welcome." said Amanda, having recovered from her laughter. Then, before Snape could say anything at all, she carelessly threw herself onto his bed, and took up laying on her side, propped up on an elbow, with her legs curled into herself, which had the...very...unfortunate...consequence...of hiking her already indecently short and transparent nightdress up, revealing to Snape far, far, FAR more bare skin than he - or, at least, the decent and reasonable human being inside of him - wanted to see from her.

It was too much, far too much, and Snape immediately turned around on the spot to stare at the wall.

"I want to start training with you today." Amanda stated (she STATED nearly everything she ever said - or else DEMANDED - which, coming from anyone else in the universe, would have had Snape irritated or even flat out pissed off at them, but since it was Amanda doing the stating and the demanding, he found that it was actually sort of endearing), as if people frequently stared at walls while conversing with her. On remembering just where she had spent the past eleven years of her life - a mental hospital - Snape realized that they probably did; that this WAS entirely normal a situation for Amanda.

Then Snape's mind registered what Amanda had said. Dear GOD what was the universe PLAYING AT? Snape would have actually shaken his fists and screamed "Why?!" to the heavens oh so very dramatically, right then and there, if Amanda had not been present.

"You were going to start training with me today anyway." Snape replied, still resolutely staring at the wall and keeping his back to the woman who lived to damn him to eternal, internal conflict and torture. Though, of course, he knew what she really had meant...

"Now." Amanda STATED cheerfully, confirming it for him anyway. "It's cold." she added, almost randomly.

"I haven't even had breakfast." Snape argued, even as he got the meaning of her random addition, and he flicked his wand casually at the window to close it again. "And I doubt you have, either." he added, in continued, further, likely pointless attempts at dissuading her from this notion of hers that they start training IMMEDIATELY; he didn't want to be around her any more than he had to, any SOONER than he had to. Though, considering the present circumstance, that would already seem to be something of a lost cause...

"  
Okay; breakfast first, then training." said Amanda, as Snape had known - or at least hoped in the tiniest of amounts - she would. Because, if there was one, set, certain fact Snape knew about the woman, it was that she loved food (the evidence to support this fact being every breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the past week, during which Amanda had gorged herself on everything within her reach - and a few items that had not been - to the point of being sick. Every. Single. Time).

"Great." said Snape, feeling the smallest bit relieved. "Now stand up and pull your gown down so-"  
He stopped dead as he realized just how his words, just how his PHRASING, sounded, and he could have sworn that in that moment, brief as a breath, that he felt the tingling of pure death shooting up his spine. "I meant so I wouldn't have to see your- figure!" he hurriedly added, though still he did not turn around. Especially not now; if the woman was going to jump him from behind and kill him, he didn't want to add insult to his mistake and ACTUALLY LOOK at her tantalizing figure.

Suddenly a loud crack filled the room, and Snape, on instinct, whirled at the sound, even as he recognized it as the sound of Apparition (which, he realized, should not have been possible within the confines of the wards - not even for the bloody Girl-Who-Lived/Chosen-One). And there she was, in all her frightening and insane glory, standing before him with glittering eyes, a twisted and furious face, and a scent about her that Snape thought might have been some sort of fruity shampoo (how had he not noticed the smell before? How had he not noticed how nice it was? And why, why, WHY was he bloody well noticing it just NOW, when Amanda Potter had her nose nearly touching his, and her hand around his throat as she pinned him to the wall of his own bloody bedroom?).

Damnit! Snape didn't want to hurt her - that was the LAST thing he wanted in this world - but he couldn't very well just stand there and let her murder him before breakfast! Still, that decent human being inside of him thought that he ought to at least TRY a nonviolent approach to avoiding being murdered by the woman before he resorted to kneeing her in the gut or something like that (where the bloody hell had his wand gone? It HAD just been in his hand, hadn't it?). Damnit, damnit, damnit! If she hadn't looked like a literal clone of Lily Potter, if she hadn't been Lily's daughter, and if only Snape could have ignored the fact that, in another life, Amanda Potter could have been HIS daughter...

"Amanda, I'm sorry." Snape said, as calmly as he could while being strangled by a woman who seemed, strangely, a hell of a lot stronger than she looked. "I only meant that I didn't want to have to look at you in an indecent manner- I meant- bloody hell, I meant the HEM! I meant pull the HEM down, not the whole fucking...gown itself..." Snape's words and breath fled him as he took a sudden, deep inhalation of that fruity scent (strawberries, he could recognize it now) wafting off of that beautiful, wavy, dark red hair (apparently, some female Order member had taught Amanda a hairstyling spell, which was something ELSE Snape really should have realized earlier; what was WITH HIM this morning?) that was surrounding his and her face both like a curtain, trapping them in a darkness broken only by those glittering emerald eyes, those incredible, smouldering emeralds...emeralds growing closer, closer, bigger and bigger, and...Lily...

Many loud footsteps were followed by the bang of the bedroom door flying open - and the new arrivals, drawn by the commotion, were just in time to see the lips of a bare-chested Severus Snape meet a murderous, scantily-clad Amanda Potter's.

Time froze.

The crowd in the doorway, consisting of Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Cedric Diggory and Kendra Abernathy, Hermione Granger, the Weasley twins, and Bill and Charlie Weasley (who had arrived at Toschi Manor not five minutes ago, ironically, or perhaps fittingly, to meet Amanda Potter for the first time), stood stock still, various mouths agape, and a wide range of expressions on their faces, ranging from shock, to rage, to disgust, and all the way over to amusement.

Snape was as deathly (not a pun, but an omen of his immediate future) still as those who had just burst in on the scene.

Amanda Potter, similarly, was so motionless. All but for her eyes, that is. They shifted, changed, melted from murderous rage into pure terror and panic, and behind them surely everyone could see the rushing of years worth of memories playing out in one, single instant; one...single...heartbeat.

"I'm sorry." Snape heard his own voice, heard it so small, so nearly inaudible, so thin, so flat, in that pure, deafening silence that had filled the room the millisecond their lips had met.

Another heartbeat, and then Severus Snape found himself flying backwards across the room, and crashing out the window.

* * *

"So, where's the savior of wizardkind?" Bill Weasley asked, on his - and his brother, Charlie's - early morning arrival to Toschi Manor after many months of covertly traveling around Britain in search of incredibly dangerous (for more reasons than one) magical objects; Horcruxes, belonging to Voldemort.

"Probably still asleep." said Sirius, with no small measure of fondness in his voice, Bill noticed. But then, it made sense, considering Amanda Potter was his goddaughter. "Amanda sleeps like a rock - gets it from James; Lily was the lightest sleeper I've ever known. She'd wake up if you dropped a pin, and I'm being entirely- OW! Bloody hell, Moony! What the hell was that for?"

"You were going to say it again." Lupin said simply, though from his expression and his tone of voice, he was clearly torn between being serious, and being amused with a try at mock-innocence.

"For once, you're wrong." Sirius grinned. "I wasn't going to make one of THOSE jokes."

"There's a first time for everything." Bill laughed, while Charlie shrugged, when everyone in the vicinity looked to them, the two new Weasleys, for confirmation.

"So, what's she like?" Charlie said curiously, and seriously. "Where's she been all this time?"

Bill noted, with a bit of a sinking feeling, the way everyone (Sirius, Lupin, Peter, Fred, George, Hermione, Cedric, and even little Kendra - who, for the past ten minutes, had not once blinked or looked away from Bill, something the young man had been simultaneously amused and embarrassed by) looked at each other with grim and knowing looks on their faces. Well, not Kendra, for some reason. Certainly, she looked...almost upset, but...it wasn't QUITE the same as the looks worn by the adults.

"She's...had some trouble...adjusting to everything." Lupin spoke slowly, carefully, after a very obvious (to the adults, anyway - the look went right over the girl's head) glance at Kendra. "It turned out that she's lived her entire life in the Muggle world, and so, naturally, she had no idea magic even existed until Dumbledore tracked her down and explained it all to her."

"Damn." Bill shook his head, ran a hand through his hair (which was in a ponytail), almost wincing with sympathy. "It's difficult enough for Muggle-born kids to have that dropped on them...can't imagine what it must've been like for her - for an adult. And add to that the whole prophecy thing; that she's got to save an entire world and kill a man to boot..."

"Somehow I don't think she'll have much trouble with that." Peter squeaked, which got him a hard kick and a glower from Sirius.

"So, erm, have you had any luck...finding the Horcruxes?" Hermione asked of Bill and Charlie.

"Hard to find something when the bloke who owns it keeps moving it around." Bill shrugged. "After we did away with the cup, and he discovered that the diary, the locket, and the ring were done for...well, I don't know why Dumbledore sent us on our little goose chase. You-Know-Who will have his remaining Horcruxes under lock and key, and probably sitting at the bottom of the ocean for good measure."

"But we know where the snake is." Kendra spoke up, in a breathless sort of voice, her eyes still fixed on Bill like glue.

"Yeah, we do." Bill agreed, laughing. "But we also know Nagini is either with You-Know-Who at all times, or kept someplace that not even the most senior Death Eaters know about. She might as well be as far away as the other remaining Horcruxes, because the only one of us who can even hold their own against You-Know-Who - and have a chance at getting a curse off at Nagini - is Dumbledore."

"Yeah, well, what if we-" Sirius fell silent at the exact same moment everyone else did, as a loud and familiar cracking noise echoed down through the halls of Toschi Manor.

Suddenly they were all on their feet, all sprinting through the corridors, climbing the stairs to the east wing of the Manor, wands drawn (this had to be a Death Eater attack; they had bypassed the Fidelius, after all, so who was to say they hadn't discovered a means of bypassing anti-apparition wards, as well?), towards just where the sound had come from (Bill realized after a second that they were making for Snape's room).

Sirius led the charge, reached the door first, literally kicked it in and-

And then no one was moving - or even breathing - at the sight that met them within Snape's room.

Bill would have thought they had all just interrupted something extremely private and intimate between the pair in the room, between one Severus Snape, and a woman who could only be Amanda Potter (Bill had seen Lily Potter in photos taken of old Order members in the first war before, and he had had Amanda described to him just a few minutes ago by Sirius), had it not been for the fact that Snape was white as death, that Amanda Potter had the man with his back to the wall by the throat, and that Amanda was looking about two seconds away from murdering Snape.

Such a common expression, that. Murder someone. It never actually meant anything besides that someone was extremely pissed off at someone else. No one ever actually FELT murderous intent for the object of their rage.

And yet, Bill knew real, true murderous intent when he saw it, having seen it in the eyes of Death Eaters before (and even some on the Order's side of the conflict), and right then, he saw it in Amanda Potter's.

And a split second later, she actually carried through on that oh so common figure of speech. Amanda, holding Snape in the air by the throat, whirled on the spot and threw the man across the room with an impressive and even impossible (Bill thought that there had to be some not-exactly-accidental magic behind Amanda's physical feats) strength. Snape sailed through the air like he'd been hit by a troll, smashed straight through his window, shattering glass outward like a grenade had been dropped in the room, and rolled to a stop several feet away from the Manor in the considerable morning snow.

Amanda Potter, even with as indecently clothed as she was, did not hesitate to stalk across the room and vault through the window after Snape.

* * *

Remus Lupin, among others, had been conversing with the newly arrived Bill and Charlie, when the unmistakable noise of Apparition had come from the east wing of Toschi Manor. All of them likely fearing the same exact thing - an attack by Death Eaters, who HAD after all found their OLD headquarters - rushed through the Manor, and only when they had arrived in the specific corridor that they did...did Lupin realize that the noise had very specifically come from inside Severus Snape's room.

They all burst into the room, took in the scene within...and then over two decades of emnity returned in full force for one Sirius Black. Lupin had not seen such a rage on his best friend's face since they had confronted their OTHER best friend, Peter Pettigrew, some nine years ago, about his betrayal of James and Lily to Voldemort.

"I'm sorry." Lupin heard Snape say, in a voice that was so unlike Snape that Lupin thought he had to have imagined it, and then Amanda threw Snape out the window with clearly, magically enhanced movements, and proceeded to follow him out into the snow, obviously intent on...on KILLING Snape. There was no pretending otherwise - they all knew the stories, they all more or less knew what Amanda had done, numerous times, over the course of her life. They all knew the woman was insane, and a murderess, and that JUST this sort of situation had been almost inevitable, but...

"Come on, Sirius!" Lupin snapped out, making for the window. He stopped when something he really should have expected to happen...happened. Sirius stood motionless, staring out the window at the scene of his goddaughter thrashing around in the snow with Snape, but he made no move to ENTER that scene.

"Nah, I'm good, thanks." Sirius replied, in a voice that reminded Lupin of the shell of a man (the man Lupin really COULD have believed had killed all those Muggles rather than Peter) he had met in the Shrieking Shack nine years ago.

"Damnit Sirius, she's going to kill him!" Lupin shouted, trying to get Sirius to cooperate and go and help stop Amanda - his goddaughter - because he was probably the only one who COULD stop her. Sirius didn't budge an inch.

"So what?" Sirius replied, almost casually. "We knew she was going to snap and kill someone eventually. Better that it's Snivellus than any of US-"

"DAMNIT Sirius!" Lupin repeated, louder still. Mentally throwing up his hands, he raced across the room and leapt out the window, landing hard, and barefooted, in the snow. Amanda was still wrestling with Snape in the snow several feet away, the both of them seemingly unaffected by the cold despite that the pair were far less clothed than anyone else. "Amanda, STOP!"

"Don't make me stun you!" Hermione warned, trying, like Lupin, to get a bead on Amanda alone; if they missed Amanda and hit Snape instead, that would give the former free reign to just snap the latter's neck in an instant and be done with it.

Glancing back towards the shattered window, Lupin saw Cedric and Bill holding Kendra back from joining them out in the snow, and that was when the idea, the hope - born of watching Amanda and Kendra, in many ways BOTH girls, interact over the course of the past week - came to Lupin's mind.

"Amanda, stop; I know you don't want to do this in front of Kendra!"

Miraculously, impossibly, Lupin's gamble paid off, and Amanda, in the middle of straddling Snape - and trying to again get a choking hold on his throat, as she had had in the bedroom - stopped dead, an expression of pure and utter horror coming over her face. Her eyes widened and drained of their murderous intent, panic filling them now instead.

A split second later and it was over; a stunner directly to Amanda's chest (cast by Hermione) and it was over.

Lupin hurried over to Snape, who lay still in the snow, an unconscious Amanda draped over him. "Are you all right?"

Snape rather unceremoniously pushed Amanda off himself, sat up, and just looked at Lupin for a long moment. Then, finally, breathing heavily, and in a hoarse voice, he said, "If THAT is what kissing Lily would have gotten me...then thank fucking merlin I never did...because that..." Snape gestured with a trembling hand to the unconscious Amanda. "that was definitely not worth it."

* * *

There were a lot of things that Kendra Abernathy did not understand.

One such thing was: why had her mother died, and left Kendra all alone in the world? Oh, Kendra knew the reasons, she knew that her mother had been killed by the Death Eaters, killed when they had told Kendra- when they had told her...when they had told her that her mother wasn't GOING TO DIE if Kendra just cooperated and just went and just...

She knew the reasons, knew it in her HEAD, but she didn't know why in her HEART, why, in the grand scheme of things, in the eyes of the great powers like Fate and Destiny. And it kept Kendra up at night, every night. That, and just plain missing her mother and everything about her. Mostly Kendra would just cry herself to sleep, or wake UP crying, but sometimes she'd find herself screaming at night. Screaming and kicking, and then Cedric - CED - would enter her room and hold her, stroke her hair, and talk to her until she fell asleep again.

Something else Kendra did not understand was...

"Why did she do that?" she whispered, to herself more than to Cedric, or any of the other adults gathered in the massive dining room, around the massive dining hall table, for a meeting over breakfast.

"Kendra-" Cedric began.

"She looked like a Death Eater." Kendra went on, needing to say it, and say it loud. Apparently, she said it a little TOO loud, because several adults looked her way. In shock and in worry. "She's been so NICE, so...so FUN, so CARING. Why did she go and do what she did? Why did she look so...scary? She wanted to KILL HIM, just like the Death Eaters looked at Grimmauld Place!" She turned her eyes (they were probably wide, and probably filling up with tears, but she didn't care) on Cedric. "I was WITH THEM, I KNOW what they looked like, I know what they were like, trying to kill those people, and Amanda looked JUST LIKE THEM!"

"Kendra, let's get you to your room, all right?" Cedric said firmly. "You really shouldn't be here - not for this meeting."

"She was ACTUALLY GOING TO DO IT!" Kendra cried, pointing a probably dramatic finger across the table at Snape, and totally aware that she was growing more and more ridiculous and hysterical by the second. She didn't care. "Why? How COULD SHE?! She's my friend - I deserve to be here!" she added furiously, as Cedric made to gently lift her from her seat.

Cedric shook his head at her, then put some more force into getting her away from the table. "No, I'm sorry, but you're going to your room. Amanda will be fine, I promise. But you're not going to be there when she wakes up, and you're not going to sit in on an important Order meeting; you know that's been the rule since the start. You don't need to hear this stuff."

"She's my friend!" Kendra repeated, trying to work her arm out of Cedric's firm but not exactly painful grip. "This isn't even a meeting about a mission or whatever else! It's just about HER!"

"Cedric's right, Kendra." said Parvati Patil, in an almost gentle voice, coming over to take Kendra's other arm (which Kendra found too shocking to even try and resist for a good five seconds; they were going to haul her out like some kind of prisoner!). "You really shouldn't be here for this meeting-"

"Oh, shove it up your ARSE!" Kendra snarled, stamping on the woman's foot. Ever since meeting her, Kendra had never really liked this specific Patil twin. Probably because Kendra had always gotten the feeling PARVATI had never liked HER either. Neither of them really knew WHY they didn't like each other, though. It just...was a...a THING.

"Kendra!" Cedric said sharply, reprovingly. "Could you PLEASE just STOP and come quietly, for merlin's sake? No cursing, no STOMPING, and no-"

"Oh, FU-!" Parvati started to exclaim but caught herself, as Kendra managed, in a fantastic bit of maneuvering on her part (at least, in Kendra's opinion), to drive her elbow into the woman's ribs. "Come ON, Kendra, you've got to work with us here!"

"What the hell do you think I'm doing?" Kendra retorted, all biting sarcasm as, when the adults opted to forgo NICE and just lift her up in the air between them and CARRY her out of the dining room, she let her whole body go slack and weighty as a sack of potatoes. "I'm not leaving! I'm GOING to hear all about Amanda, and then I'm going to SEE Amanda! I'll be the FIRST person to see her, in fact!"

"Please don't make me use my wand." Parvati growled, her tone making it very clear that she wanted nothing MORE than an excuse to just draw her wand and stun Kendra. Lucky for Kendra, the girl knew Parvati would NEVER do that, because Kendra happened to know a medically proven fact about the stunning spell, and the serious and negative effects it had on both old people AND on children.

"If I still had MY wand, I'd transfigure your FUCKING TITS into big, fat, slimy slugs!" Kendra said viciously.

"At least I HAVE tits!" Parvati hissed back scathingly, apparently unable to help herself.

"Oh, yeah, and a fucking fat lot of good they're doing you!" Kendra spat. "You've been single for like, what, a hundred years now?"

"Parvati, you're an adult, remember? Kendra, just stop!" Cedric cut across them, sharper than ever. He even gave Kendra's arm a squeeze. "Just- just, enough, please. Merlin, where did you even LEARN those words anyway?" he added, almost in afterthought.

Kendra shrugged (a pretty difficult thing to do when you were being dragged along the floor), then nodded to Sirius. "He says stuff like that all the time."

Nearly everyone looked - or glared - at Sirius, who tried to look innocent and indignant.

"What?" he challenged the rest of the table's occupants. "It's not MY fault the kid has this bad habit of walking into a room at the wrong time."

"Let me guess, it's also not your fault you have this bad habit of swearing yourself blue?" Lupin said, with only a small bit of sarcasm, but definitely a large amount of disapproval.

"Kendra. Stand. Up. Already. This. Is. Ridiculous!" Parvati huffed, as she and Cedric neared the dining room door, slowly but surely, with short, jerky pulls of Kendra, who was now using the bottoms of her sneakers - which were new, and had really great traction - to her advantage.

"No!" Kendra glared up at the woman. In the absence of the ability to give Parvati the middle finger, Kendra settled for sticking her tongue out at the woman. "If you're taking me out of here, I'm going to give you hell the whole ARSE-TITTING way!"

"That's it, you and me - we're definitely going to have a few words later." Cedric directed at Sirius, along with a dirty look. "She NEVER talked like this three months ago!"

"My fucking MOM wasn't dead three months ago!" Kendra shouted. "And none of my FRIENDS ever tried to kill anyone out of nowhere! And..."

Kendra continued ranting, swearing, and fighting all the way back to her room, which she DID eventually end up in. LOCKED in, which just sent her anger skyrocketing. Sure, she was back with her wand again, but she didn't know any spells to get past whatever barriers or locking charms Cedric and Parvati had put on her bedroom door, so it didn't do Kendra any good at all.

Well, actually, it did SOME good...

As morning changed into midday, and Cedric came into her room with a tray of her favorite lunch-type foods, Kendra wasted no time in pointing her wand at it and snapping out, with great satisfaction, "Alarte Ascendare!" Food and drink shot up into the air, hit the ceiling with considerable force, and then came raining back down to cover both Kendra and Cedric.

"Feel better now?" Cedric broke the silence, his lips twitching terribly.

"Yes!" Kendra defiantly huffed - LIED, because the truth was, she didn't feel any better at all. She felt WORSE, in fact. It didn't matter anyway; Cedric seemed to know she was lying. "What happened to Amanda?" she asked, before Cedric could do or say anything COMFORTING. "Why did she try to kill Snape?" Kendra had been at the very back of the entourage when they'd taken off for Snape's room, and she'd STILL been at the very back when they GOT THERE, so she hadn't seen whatever had actually HAPPENED in the room with Amanda. Kendra had just heard the sound of breaking glass, and then people had been shouting, and the next second she had been watching Amanda trying to KILL SOMEONE out in the snow, while CEDRIC had kept KENDRA from going out after Amanda.

"Snape...made a mistake." Cedric sighed, after a long, long silence in which Kendra guessed he was trying to decide just what to tell her. "It...upset Amanda, and...well, you saw what happened."

"What did he do?" Kendra pressed, while picking up a large bit of ham sandwich off her bed and promptly starting to eat it.

Cedric, making a face, waved his wand and caused the mess formerly known as Kendra's lunch to disappear, then tapped his wand on the tray, and made fresh and clean food appear on it.

"You learned food spells?!" Kendra exclaimed, shocked and gratified - and touched. "All this time I thought- I thought OTHER people were making my meals, but it was YOU the whole time? YOU'VE been making these for me?"

Cedric, looking very caught out, didn't say anything - because Kendra didn't let him; she threw her arms around his neck with a great sob - and because he didn't have to. Learning food-making spells, and secretly using them to make Kendra's every meal for the past who knew how many weeks, already told Kendra everything she could ever have needed to hear from him.

* * *

"I told you never to come here again." Lisa Turpin said icily, blond hair tied back in a tight bun, ice-blue eyes fixed on Cho Chang, who had a dozen wands currently pointed at her from all directions. Still, Lisa did not rise from her favorite, red, leather sofa on the interior balcony overlooking the nightclub that was her palace and all who inhabited it; dancing, drinking, and doing even a little more under the flashing and strobing lights, and with the musical and - though Lisa, of course, would never tell anyone - MAGICAL beats pulsing in their ears.

"Oh, trust me, I wouldn't have come here if it wasn't important." Cho responded, sweeping her eyes over the security force that had swarmed her the second she had (through decidedly violent means - or so Lisa had heard from up in her balcony) strolled out onto Lisa's private balcony. She kept her hands raised, not wanting to give them any (more) reason to curse her on this fine evening.

Lisa considered Cho for a moment, then, smirking, she relaxed back into her sofa and gestured, first to her security personnel to back off, then to Cho to join her on the sofa. "So what is it that the Dark Lord wants from me now? More recruits?" Lisa asked, feigning friendliness and casualness alike. She knew Cho would not believe either. Well, perhaps the latter, since Lisa WAS a queen in her domain, after all, but the FORMER... "I'd be more than happy to conduct the drive again - provided, of course, I receive the same level of payment in return for my efforts as I did last time."

"I'm not here on Voldemort's behalf!" Cho snarled, and Lisa saw real, deep loathing in her admittedly still pretty face.

'Huh.' Lisa thought. 'Well, that's interesting. But even so...'

"Well then," Lisa began aloud, dropping all pretense of friendliness, her voice dropping a hundred degrees below zero in an instant. "since I now have no reason whatsoever to keep looking at your face..." She twitched an idle finger at her security force, and they jumped forward to seize and drag Cho off Lisa's sofa.

"Wait, wait, I have an offer! An offer! You have to listen!" Cho said frantically, struggling against the wizards and witches holding her - both physically, and at wandpoint.

"I don't make a habit of giving out warnings before ordering someone killed. I suggest you take it and leave - while you still can." Lisa turned her head away from Cho, so she really WOULDN'T have to look at her.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?!" Cho exclaimed, still struggling against her HANDLERS.

"More than you could ever know." Lisa said, honestly and wholeheartedly.

Cho made a noise of disbelief - even incredulity. "You're not STILL mad at me about...about THAT, are you? Come on, Lisa, we were seventeen!"

Lisa whipped her head around to fix Cho with her hardest, coldest stare. She even leaned forward in her seat. "You LITERALLY left me at the ALTAR!" she snarled. "Do you have even the faintest imaginings as to just how much SHIT my parents gave me over that? And then, after, when they heard you'd joined the organization dedicated to torturing and killing their kind - and yes, they did hear about it; I hear everything, Cho, and so THEY hear through ME."

"And how ARE Mr. and Mrs. Turpin? Still own that house in Surrey?" Cho tried for a light tone.

"Right, I'll just tell a Death Eater all about the current whereabouts of my Muggle parents." Lisa chuckled (not at all nicely). "You must think me stupid."

"They WERE almost MY parents, too, you know." Cho said pointedly, with a weak attempt at a chuckle of her own.

Rather than respond, Lisa fixed her gaze on the nearest of her security personnel. "Would you hurry up and waste this bitch? It's not like that's exactly what I pay you for, or anything like that."

"I want to kill Voldemort!" Cho burst out in panic, on seeing the security wizard's wand moving to press against the side of her skull.

But, panic or not...

Lisa forestalled Cho's execution with a raised hand. "Sit your sweet ass down again; you have five minutes, and if, at the end of those five minutes, I don't like what I've heard, you're going to die, and I'M going to acquire a penchant for necrophilia - do you understand?"

"Perfectly." grinned Cho weakly, sinking onto the sofa again with visibly shaking knees.

"Good." Lisa smiled, slinking an arm around Cho's waist and pulling the woman up against herself. Lisa angled her head so that they were nearly touching noses. "Now start talking."

"Aha, right, well- erm, you see..." Cho blathered, bringing a flaring of amusement to the inside of Lisa's chest. "I had this...this woman that I- I loved- and she, honestly...PARTIALLY was the reason why I joined the Death Eaters. I've never believed in trashing Muggle-borns and Muggles. But this woman, she...she was killed in a battle, and I realized that, if Voldemort hadn't sent her into that battle, well...she'd still be alive."

"She has my deepest condolences." Lisa said simply - and sincerely. Though, not for the reason Cho might have thought; any woman who would enter into a relationship with Cho Chang deserved all the sympathy Lisa had to give.

"Well, that's very nice of you to say." Cho smiled faintly, eyes going wide with surprise. "I didn't think you...anyway, I'm here now because I...I have this group, this...this TEAM, it's more like, I suppose, and since most of us are former Death Eaters, or CURRENT Death Eaters who want out, we do know where Voldemort usually spends his time. We're planning to corner him, trap him, and hit him with everything we have at the same time. That's why I'm here - I want to ask you for a few dozen extra wands."

"Your reasoning being that not even a wizard as powerful as Voldemort will be able to stand up to an army, once he has no option BUT to stand up to it." Lisa surmised, smiling a little as she realized that the idea...appealed to her.

"Exactly." Cho smiled, too. "Voldemort is not invincible - no one is - even if there are those damnable Horcruxes, and the Elixer of Life to contend with. We had a decade of him out of our hair when Amanda Potter managed to...well, not KILL him, but you know what I mean! The point is, he was powerless and helpless, exiled, and we had him-"

"Out of our hair, yes." Lisa finished mildly. She let her gaze wander out across her palace for a few moments before returning them to Cho's pretty face. If Cho was serious, if she could even be trusted...Lisa's thoughts turned to the world of her childhood. A world where her parents had been able to simply...live without fear. Go to work every day, even just step out the front door. Sure, Lisa knew Voldemort had eased up on Muggle-borns in recent years, however, the Dark Lord still remained in complete contempt and spite for plain, pure Muggles. And if, as Lisa's sources told her, Voldemort was truly beginning to make moves towards seizing the Muggle world...

"In all honesty," Lisa finally spoke again, putting on a careless tone. "my business would be booming a great deal more if he wasn't the one running the wizarding world. Him and his Death Eaters." she added, stressing "Death Eaters" in a way that caused Cho to flinch. "All right. I'll give you your army. But if you use it for anything other than what you've just told me you want to use it for...I'm not going to waste my time with making threats."

Cho's expression went almost blank. "Really? I never expected you to actually agree- I mean...thank you, thank you, Lisa! You won't regret this!"

"Only if you succeed." Lisa replied, planting a practiced hand between Cho's breasts and pushing her carelessly away. "And you'd best hurry up and do that, before I change my mind."

Cho rose to her feet, tripped, and fell into a security guard. "Right, I will- I just- err...where will I...I mean, when will I meet my legion, exactly?"

"Right here." Lisa laughed softly, spreading her hands in indication. "I have a basement - where all the REAL magic happens. Be back here in four days if you don't want to miss them."

Lisa, in spite of herself, watched Cho's retreating rear until it was out of sight, and then her thoughts turned to a future, not just free of Voldemort, but a future in which she, Lisa Turpin, queen of the criminal underworld, would have everlasting youth and infinite life (Lisa didn't see the harm in being a little selfish here. After all, she was being incredibly selfless in her choice to throw herself behind Cho's plan to rid the world of Voldemort, and so shouldn't Lisa get a reward for that?).

There was only one agent who Lisa could trust to retrieve the Philosopher's Stone from out of the possession of the most powerful Dark Lord alive - and actually see to it that it reached Lisa's hands.

From out of the pocket of her leather jacket, Lisa withdrew a cell phone, tapped a single key to initiate the speed-dial of a very special someone in her contacts list, and brought the phone to her ear.

"Daphne, if you're interested, I have another job for you."


End file.
